Starbreeze says sorry, reverses price increase on Payday 2 DLC bundle: 'We definitely didn't handle this right'
The price of the Infamous Collection took a big jump just a few weeks ahead of the rollout of a new DLC subscription service.

Starbreeze rolled out a new subscription service for Payday 2 DLC yesterday, which struck me as a pretty good deal: $5 per month for every piece of DLC currently available, and you can subscribe and cancel as you see fit. But the launch turned a less-than-flattering spotlight on another recent Payday 2 development: A significant increase in the price of the Infamous Collection, a bundle of all current Payday 2 DLC that players can buy outright.
A few weeks before the launch of the subscription service, the Infamous Collection jumped from $118 to $170, a steep increase that many players assumed was meant to funnel them toward the subscription service. Gustav Nisser, Starbreeze's head of commercial, said there was no connection—that the timing was simply "unfortunate," and the studio had "dropped the ball" on keeping fans in the loop.
Payday fans, it's fair to say, weren't convinced, and now Starbreeze has decided to walk the whole thing back: The original bundle discount has been restored.
"The community has been pretty clear about how it looks next to the subscription launch—and they're not wrong, it's terrible timing," Nisser told PC Gamer. "We definitely didn't handle this right, and we'll be apologising to the community. Hopefully there will be at least some acceptance that this was an honest mistake."
Nisser said the discount on the Infamous Collection was reduced from 52% to 33% as part of a "general pricing review" that found it to be "a bit too steep," since it was cumulative with individual DLC discounts—that is, the 52% cut would apply on top of any other DLC discounts that might be in place at any given time. But for quite a few players it wasn't the new price that was the issue so much as the fact that it was made without notice, leading to a perception that Starbreeze was trying to quietly funnel players to the subscription offering.
"If we had realized the change would be happening so close to the subscription launch, we wouldn't have done it," Nisser said. "In addition, we always aim to communicate upcoming price changes to our community and in this case we missed doing that as well.
"So basically we messed up in a couple of different ways, particularly both internal coordination and community communication and... the results speak for themselves. The community has been pretty clear that they felt it looked like we were trying to push people into the subscription, and I completely understand that. For better or worse that's not the case, literally just a mishap."
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Starbreeze has good reason to be careful about getting this right. Payday 2 is now a 12-year-old game but it's still pulling in tens of thousands of players every day on Steam; Payday 3, its presumptive successor, currently has a 24-hour peak concurrent player count of just 518. Starbreeze is still working on it, but for now it also very obviously needs to keep the wheels turning smoothly on Payday 2, too—and that means not antagonizing the players who have stuck with it.
2025 games: This year's upcoming releases
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.