Payday 3 offline mode under consideration as launch disaster continues: "Everything is on the table for us right now"

Payday 3 developer Starbreeze Studios addressed the game's ongoing server and matchmaking outages in a livestream this week, assuring fans that while "we have not confirmed an offline mode," the studio is "evaluating every possibility" going forward.

Brand director Almir Listo and lead producer Andreas Häll Penninger fielded questions from the Payday 3 community on Twitch, in the first of a series of troubleshooting and feedback streams airing at 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm BST. The next stream is coming tomorrow, September 26, and Listo says they'll continue until "we are in the clear and are seeing the game progress the way we intended."

"We are here today because launch has not gone well," Listo begins. "We launched Payday 3, a game we have been working on for years, for you Heisters on Thursday. The first few hours, everything seemed to go well. You were heisting, you were having fun, starting to see what features you like, what features you dislike, what you'd like to see in the future. But then the servers went down. Once we got them up, they went down again. Then we got them up, we tweeted about that, and they went down again. 

"Obviously this has created a terrible experience for you that we would like to apologize for on the team's behalf," he continues. "It's not an easy situation. So we wanted, as quickly as we could, to jump on a stream with you and let you know what our thoughts are and answer as many questions as we have time for."  

"We want to apologize," adds Penninger. "This launch, like Almir said, did not go as expected. We understand that many of you are extremely frustrated and angry. We are too. We are proud of the game. We know that many of you enjoyed the game that have managed to play it, and we are doing our utmost to solve the current situation."

The catch with Payday 3's launch has been its always-online setup, which has made the game effectively unplayable amid ongoing server outages. As you can imagine, a lot of the questions in the chat of today's feedback stream were about an offline mode, and while the devs couldn't commit to such a drastic change, they did emphasize that nothing's off the table right now.

Reading off a statement from Starbreeze, Listo says the studio is "currently evaluating all options, both short and long-term. In the short-term, our focus is to ensure your player experience. In the long-term, it means us evaluating a new partner for matchmaking services and making Payday 3 less dependent on online services." 

Asked on-stream what "less dependent on online services" actually means, Listo responds: "What it means is everything is on the table for us right now. There are questions about offline mode in chat, how we are going to move forward. We cannot give, right now, a clear yes or no answer on this topic. It's four days since launch. We did not foresee the incredible difficulties you've had logging onto the game. We will address that and answer that properly as soon as we can. Not all of our answers will be a clear yes, this is happening tomorrow at 3 o'clock. We are doing our best to handle all the existing questions and reply to you all in the best way we can."

Penninger adds: "We're constantly monitoring what you guys want to see. Obviously, offline mode is one of those things. We're also seeing a lot of requests for the game itself, quality of life and so on. We are seeing that, we are evaluating that."

In a separate tweet, Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren confirmed that the team is "looking at [the] possibility to add some sort offline mode." 

This will sound far-fetched, but Twitch chat didn't let the point go. Later in the stream, Listo gets a bit more specific. "We have not yet confirmed an offline mode," he said, but "we're evaluating every possibility going forward on how we can provide the best experience for you."

The devs were also asked why Payday 3 is always-online "for now" in the first place. Listo attributes it to the advantages of a level playing field. 

"When looking at what worked and didn't for Payday 2, we wanted to find a way to avoid the negative aspects of Payday 2 – among those, rampant cheating and unreliable hosting," he explains. "In addition, we wanted to ensure we kept our commitments to the console community and maintained one Payday community across all platforms. To deliver on that, as well as cross-progression, leaderboards, and more, we needed to ensure that every player is on the same version of the game with stable hosting across all platforms. Neutral hosting outside the platforms would solve that."

Of course, would is putting in some work here, because technical issues – specifically an "unforeseen error" at the game's third-party services – have kept the game from solving or demonstrating much of anything. "The servers are still not stable," Listo agrees. "We are working on making sure that they are. We're evaluating every other potential way forward. And we're looking to make your experience as good as it possibly can be as soon as we can."

Extending something of an olive branch, Penninger shared a list of quality of life points that the team is evaluating. They aren't going to get the game online, but they could make it more fun if and when they're implemented. Those features are: 

• Chat in lobby
• Ready button in lobby
• Mute button
• Rename loadouts
• Improvements to challenges 
• Mouse and keyboard support on console
• Quickplay

Our Payday 3 review finds Starbreeze's latest to be competently crafted but stubbornly old-school. Here's how to set up Payday 3 crossplay, provided you can play the game of course.