Starbreeze Secures Payday Franchise and Confirms Payday 3
Starbreeze AB, an independent creator, publisher and distributor, today announced its agreement with 505 Games to acquire the full rights to the Payday franchise. Any future installments will be the exclusive property of the developer and its parent company Starbreeze. The press release also confirmed the existence of Payday 3. The release stated:
“After the transaction Starbreeze will own the full rights to the PAYDAY-franchise for any future developments or commercialization, including PAYDAY 2 and PAYDAY for mobile platforms. Starbreeze will retain full net revenue from PAYDAY 2 on the Steam platform starting retroactively from May 1st,2016. Revenue generated by the console game PAYDAY 2: Crimewave Edition will continue to be split between the companies as before, and 505 Games will continue to publish the title. Furthermore, 505 Games will retain a 33% revenue share of Starbreeze’s net revenues from future sales of PAYDAY 3 capped at 40 MUSD, and after Starbreeze has fully recouped its development and marketing costs.”
There was also an update on the company’s Steam page which stated: “We’re giving away a community grenade, the skills tree and we’re making the black market free for everyone going forward. We will continue to develop stuff for Payday 2 for another 18 months. We’re excited to continue working on the game until the end of 2017!”
This essentially means Payday 2 will have no microtransactions going forward. This is good news; however, the steam version of the game has over $140 of DLC available for purchase which is a sizable chunk of cash this late into the games existence.
As of May 1, 2016, all money earned from Payday 2 on Steam belongs to Starbreeze. The two companies will continue to split revenue from the PS4 and Xbox One ports of Payday 2.
First launched in 2011, Payday is a cooperative first-person shooter computer and video game franchise with more than 14 million players on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, XboxOne and SteamOS platforms.
Source: Press Release