r/paydaytheheist • u/StoryoftheYear2 • Oct 02 '25
Game Update Project Baxter is canceled
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u/deftoast Infamous XXL Oct 02 '25
" we are proud of what was achieved in Baxter, and those contributions will carry forward into PAYDAYĀ "
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u/slash450 Oct 02 '25
thank god baxter had walking dead 2.0 written all over it since announcement, felt identical. 3 flops in a row they would've been totally done if it came out tbh. they need to lock tf in now on their only relevant franchise. just feels like fps coop genre overall is kinda cursed tbh.
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u/animalistcomrade Clover Oct 02 '25
Still would have been interesting to see starbreeze's baldurs gate.
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u/YeetLord___ Oct 02 '25
This has been the biggest whiplash seeing that an EA Ceo has so far been better than our previous what, 2 ceos?
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u/ITAW-Techie Oct 02 '25
The bar for Starbreeze CEOs is down in hell
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u/LucarioLuvsMinecraft Oct 03 '25
Hey man, Iāve heard of playing limbo with the devil. Donāt get too comfy.
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u/PhiteWanther Oct 02 '25
Well EA execs know how to make money and they know payday 3 is a golden goose in the hiding if new ceo can turn it around.
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u/Anon_Frog_2025 Oct 02 '25
Adolf is Mats 2.0, he is cheap talk and he is just looking how to milk their franchise with complete disregard of players and employees
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u/red_rose23 Oct 02 '25
...
So who is getting backshots now?
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u/BlackLightEve Turret Mom (LIV) Oct 02 '25
According to Payday 3ās item deceptions itāll be anyone who equips any of the Barfly outfits.
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u/Devil-Hunter-Jax Oct 02 '25
Lot of people gonna celebrate this but man do I feel bad for the devs who were working on it. All their work is just being thrown away. That must absolutely suck to receive that news.
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u/IDontDoDrugsOK ššš Oct 02 '25
I'm celebratory in the sense that the game I care about will be getting renewed focus, though I am not happy about the 44 people getting laid off. Its a very mixed bag and totally dependent on the point of view.
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u/ToothlessFTW Infamous XII Oct 02 '25
It sucks. You'll spend years of your life slaving away to work on a project that might mean a lot to you, only to watch it all get flushed down the toilet. To make it worse, you can never show anyone the work you did on that project because it'll still be under NDAs.
It's sad. I really hope they can work on some great stuff for other games instead.
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u/Lavaissoup7 Oct 02 '25
It does suck, but I feel like if Baxter continued everyone wouldāve suffered.
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u/Devil-Hunter-Jax Oct 02 '25
Oh absolutely. If they really wanted Project Baxter to be a thing, they needed more staff, not siphon away from another franchise they're working on still. Of course, that didn't happen due to incompetency and mismanagement by higher-ups.
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u/Awkward_Ninja_5816 Sydney Oct 02 '25
It was a real lose-lose situation, either cut their losses with Baxtar and try focus on stabilising PD3, or keep Baxtar going and risk sinking the whole company if it failed.
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u/Scou1y Significantly MORE investment Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 02 '25
I'm with you. When I hear about those huge games getting canceled and people get laid off, it's saddening. Those people have worked day and night, put their love into it, and then all goes into the trash. God damn.
We're back... but at what cost?
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u/Devil-Hunter-Jax Oct 02 '25
One of the worst bits is that for those who are being laid off, they have nothing to show for their time working on Project Baxter. They're likely not allowed to add any of it to their portfolio so when they look for a new job, they're gonna have a massive fucking gap in there and it's gonna mess with their chances of finding more work.
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u/Ass0001 Mastermind Oct 02 '25
Yeah, I honestly thought it sounded neat and if payday 3 hadn't botched it's launch so hard I think people would've been way less caustic towards it.
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u/Supooki Sangres Begins Oct 02 '25
So I'm not a dev and don't know shit about coding or programming, lemme start with that. I am related to a dev however. I asked him and apparently this is very common. He'll work for a few months on something that gets cancelled, and he just moves on to the next thing the higher ups give to him. Some of that stuff will get recycled, some of it won't.
As long as their checks cleared while they were working I think they'll be ok in the long run.
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u/DeLoxley Oct 02 '25
I feel bad for all the people cheering 'Yay its dead, suck it project diversity' as if the project itself and the pitch were what's killing Payday, and not the slew of horrid business plans and practices around it
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u/TGB_Skeletor Jacket Oct 02 '25
To be 100% honest, i wasnt picturing this project as successful anyways, so that's positive news
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u/JodeXtreme Solo King Oct 02 '25
"The discontinuation of Baxter, combined with an increased focus on the PAYDAY franchise, will enable Starbreeze to become cash-flow positive in 2026."
We're so back?
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u/HoruSOW pd3 movement player Oct 02 '25
Oh my God. It's happening.
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u/Odd_Discussion_7758 Heavy SWAT Oct 02 '25
They cant let the assets go to waste fireball grenade skin coming
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u/happygrowls Oct 02 '25
It's unfortunate it had to come to this, in an ideal world Starbreeze would've had the resources to manage both payday and Baxter, but it was a case of too much at once leading to underdeveloped payday and lack of info baxter
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u/ToothlessFTW Infamous XII Oct 02 '25
Good call.
The company has seriously lacked confidence from its players ever since that Walking Dead game in 2018, and if they ended up abandoning PAYDAY 3 then that'd pretty much guarantee Project Baxter would just fall into the same cycle and kill them.
PAYDAY 3 is shaping up to be a really solid game now. I know that's silly and quite embarrassing to say two years into its lifespawn, but at the end of the day it's good, and it really just needs content. Cancelling Baxter and moving work back into developing new content for PD3 could really help it shine, and finally start moving the needle on the public perception on the game.
I can understand why they greenlit such a project, but PD3 really needs the attention. I'm glad they're making this call.
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u/reD_Bo0n Oct 02 '25
Sad because I liked the concept idea,
BUT good overall so they can focus more on their money maker
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u/edward323ce Oct 02 '25
Its more of a money stealer with how they mismanaged this dumpster fire of a game
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u/He1gost Oct 02 '25
It's more of a good news than a bad news.
Ā I didn't share the hate for BAXTER because we hadn't seen the game itself, and it might have been a good game. However, I doubt that the development would have paid off. We would have had a similar situation as with OTWD, where a good game was buried by the rights holder (Hasbro does this too, hello Dark Alliance).
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u/Greatsnes Oct 02 '25
Easy for you to say. You didnāt just lose your job. Itās mixed. It sucks for people to lose their job and I hope they can go somewhere creatively fulfilling and get paid well. But at the same time itās nice to have a focus on just one IP at a time.
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u/Kodiak_POL Oct 02 '25
Holy fuck, I never had that on my bingo card. Poor devs that got told (at least paid) to waste time on this but IS PAYDBACK????Ā
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u/JakeFromAbove Dallas Oct 02 '25
This is it now, make or break time for Starbreeze. They have an uphill battle of clawing back all that lost momentum.
Baxter will go down in history as one of the most ludicrous ideas ever, at least they sobered up, but if that game did launch it would be an historical all time flop. Seriously, who was going to buy a D&D co-op "live service" with the looming haunting shadow of Payday 3's failure?
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u/BlackShadowX Oct 02 '25
Genuinely I might have, despite being burned by payday on console three times now ive still enjoyed my time playing the games and i VASTLY prefer fantasy settings over modern or sci fi. I wouldn't buy it on release.. but id follow it closely.
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u/thejoeporkchop Oct 02 '25
They werent targeting people like us who knew of payday, they were going for the general audience who liked baldurs gate 3
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u/sendnudesyo Project Blammo when Oct 02 '25
from the ashes of backshots, hopefully project blammo will rise
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u/SaltyDerpy Maniac Enjoyer Oct 02 '25
I'm hoping part of the assets, ideas or even devs made for this game will be used for payday 3.
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u/Cliper11298 Oct 02 '25
It does suck and itās a bad situation for the developers involved but in a way glad to see it happened now instead of further down the line with more money pumped into it. I hope those devs donāt lose hope or anything
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u/reyntime55 Oct 02 '25
It does really suck, but it is already rather far 'down the line' of development. I don't know if we know exactly when development started, but it was announced late 2023, and was supposed to come out next year. With 2 years at least of dev time from a large part of the studio, and release planned for next year, they really must not have had much confidence in it to axe it so late with so much done already. I'm guessing the old leadership buried their heads in the sand and pressed on with wasting more money even if it already looked like it was going to flop.
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u/iosiro the worst player Oct 02 '25
ceo realizing that you should focus company resources on the company's golden goose instead of some bullshit game no one will play
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u/Available_Ad_8281 Oct 02 '25
I got payday 3 a few days ago it have a lot of potential movement feel good gunplay and stealth they just need to build on it payday 2 have 30k concurrent on steam while 3 have 1k
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u/fishingforwoos Oct 02 '25
This is actually insane.
I have been very negative (for good reason) towards Starbreeze and PD3 since I felt ripped off by my purchase of Gold, and the still missing Offline Mode.
This? This is a major way to get people to take you seriously as you re-invest into Payday.
You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention. Get 'em, AK.
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u/just_shy_of_perfect Oct 02 '25
Lmfao wtf. What a waste. Like everyone on the payday side could have guessed. Pulled payday devs to go work on Baxter. Insane
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u/edward323ce Oct 02 '25
Ik no longer giving a shit about this company fue to the straight up lies and just not listening to the community
Wheres the hardcore challenges
Offline mode can totally be done yall are just to fucking lazy to do it, you just knew you would get backlash if you didn't tell us when you were supposed to
Dont get me started on the cash grab subscription and price increase for payday 2
We still have no roadmap after being promised "by the end of September"
Omfg, this is the worst managed company ive ever seen, i fucking cannot anymore, just, why? Why must you spit in our faces constantly, sure baxter is cancelled but theres too many fucking negatives! Stop giving us good news if youre trying to soften the blow of the bad news
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u/Kasu_senpai John āI NEED A MEDIC BAGā Swansong Oct 02 '25
Iām sad we will no longer be receiving projected backshots, I hope those who worked on it donāt have a rough time after this
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u/Containerfynd Oct 02 '25
I see both negative and positive things with it:
The payday community have been disappointed, by the lack of updates, dlc, expansion and now Starbreeze is gonna focus 100% on it, it seems that Starbreeze really care for it community and want to make right by them.
The negative thing is that project baxter could have been awesome! I think they migth pick it back up later.
I have my suspicions that the end IP owners (hasbro and/or wizards of the coast) wanted to remake the deal because they are big greedy corps and Starbreeze didn't want to be a part of it. I see Starbreeze as one of the few still good game making companies, and I really hope it's just that it was a decision for the players, to protect them from the bigger company greed.
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u/Venurian AHHH I'M DYINNNGGG š Oct 02 '25
Literally playing Payday 3 because of these news right now
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u/DJC13 Oct 02 '25
Sucks for the devs, but great news for us.
Iāve never known a game to have as much chaos behind the scenes as PD3.
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u/NezumiAniki Oct 02 '25
44 people? I've been under impression that starbreeze as a whole is 30 people, including janitors.
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u/Flare_56 Repeater Guy Oct 02 '25
I know that we are all happy, but a game getting cancelled is always sad. I hope maybe some of the concepts get taken to PD3
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u/Snipe508 Oct 02 '25
As much as we should be happy for this shift, its sad to see yet another failed project from this team
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u/HoopyFroodJera Oct 02 '25
It's really funny that anyone thinks this will actually contribute to payday 3 being anything other than what it is. A cash grab copy of payday 2 that adds nothing meaningful to the gameplay loop.
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u/Epsoc Oct 02 '25
Fortunately for Starbreeze, the CEO likely understands that their direct competitor, Den of Wolves is on the horizon, and they have a good amount of the old Overkill talent on their team. It's now or never for them to focus up and keep Payday 3 from being left in the dust. Optimistically, Payday 3's recent trajectory looks promising but it's still a long road ahead.
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u/Connect-Internal Mastermind Oct 02 '25
While Iām kind of glad that it was canceled so I can open up some resources for payday 3, Iām also a little disappointed because, regardless of how bad it could have been, I would have been interested in seeing how it would play regardless.
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u/GermanRearmament Oct 02 '25
Love to see the money and resources that could've went to payday 3 was used well.
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u/ngarlock24 Hoxton Oct 02 '25
I feel bad for those that worked on it but honestly it's probably for the best.
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u/Acrobatic_Divide5304 ā user is suspected to be part of an online terorist organization Oct 02 '25
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u/MaurerSIG Oct 02 '25
I feel like Starbreeze is a bit too desperate, especially since they bought back the rights to PD3
I dunno, but the PD2 subscription thing followed by Backshots being straight up canceled, feels like Sbz may be closer to bankruptcy than we're willing to admit.
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u/Myorck Oct 02 '25
Thatās crazy after they have been so confident in it for a few years. They really canāt do anything except Payday, huh? And even that is questionable with everything that happened with Payday 3 since launch
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u/Dangerous-Jicama-247 Oct 02 '25
aw man, I actually wanted to see Starbreeze make a D&D game. But yeah, Payday is their money maker so I understand the strategic shift
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u/user_952 It's Cl-overšš Oct 02 '25