After community backlash and a slower than expected start, Swedish studio Starbreeze says PAYDAY 3 is finally getting its oft-requested "offline mode", although there are clear caveats to consider, like the fact that the game will still require an Internet connection to function properly — despite the name. According to the dev, a beta of the feature will be updated over time, and the online requirement will eventually be removed at a later date.
As reported by VG247, Starbreeze said it's addressing the "online only" criticism the game has received by adding the mode in a developer update video. Global brand director Almir Listo explained, as transcribed by IGN: "It's not our full vision for [the offline mode feature]. For now, we're setting it as a beta to see how it runs. We expect the performance to be affected since the parts normally frontloaded by our servers will now have to be run on your own hardware. It will work, though, and you can get a progression that will update you once you return online. You will still be required to start the game while online in solo mode, which will be improved once we improve this feature."
PAYDAY 3 launched in September last year, riddled with bugs, technical issues, and performance woes. Since then, Starbreeze has unveiled a content roadmap for the game that takes it through 2024 and released patches to address player feedback (taking a full six weeks to get the first one out). It seems the developers see a future for the game despite a much-diminished player count. At the time of this writing, for example, on Steam (where such statistics are visible), PAYDAY 3 hit a 24-hour peak of just 535 players, a paltry figure compared to its decade-old predecessor PAYDAY 2, which managed 21,584 in the same period.