The Payday community is in a bit of a strange spot at the moment.

Of course, the run-up to Payday 3 was massively exciting - after all, the cult-classic heist game was finally getting a new instalment to allow players to take on more “one last job”s, and ultimately, that can’t be a bad thing, right?

Wrong - players were left pretty disappointed by Payday 3’s shallow gameplay, and especially after so much waiting, it was a real stinger. It’s been hard for players to reconcile with, but they’ve managed it, and now the player numbers are showing that they’ve cast their votes with their playtime.

Payday 2 has beaten out its sequel massively

According to SteamDB, the player data tracking site dedicated to the online storefront, it has been revealed that players have, in their droves, chosen Payday 2 over its sequel after numerous issues with its gameplay.

Per SteamDB, at the time of writing, there are only 132 players engaged with PayDay 3 right now, and there are 13,731 playing its predecessor Payday 2. Payday is beating itself with a 10302% increase. Ouch.

It’s certainly not what Starbreeze would have wanted after making a sincere attempt to carry over the huge success of Payday 2, and though these player numbers are still beneficial to the company, it has proven that Payday 3 was, in almost every way, has been a resounding failure. It’s a sad eventuality, but the fans have cast their vote.

Payday ditched its CEO after Payday 3 failure

It’s clearly been a bumpy ride for Starbreeze, a company that has revealed very recently that it’s looking for a new CEO.

The company announced that it “needs a different leadership” after officially removing acting CEO Tobias Sjögren. Juergen Goeldner has stepped in during the interim after it has been expected that the sacking was the result of the failure of Payday 3.

It’s been incredibly tough for Starbreeze, and for the sake of themselves and the fans of the Payday franchise, we hope it’s a hole they can dig themselves out of. The gaming industry is really feeling some turbulence right now.