CEO of Starbreeze Had to Pay With His Job for Disastrous Payday 3 Launch
Starbreeze studio has bid farewell to Tobias Sjögren. His dismissal is related to the poor launch of PayDay 3.
After each failure, the people responsible are identified. It's no different with the Starbreeze studio, which today announced the dismissal of CEO, Tobias Sjögren. PayDay 3 was released during his rule and is currently being played by just a few hundred people on Steam.
- The management of Starbreeze has chosen to remove Sjögren and appoint Juergen Goeldner (a board member since 2023) as an interim CEO until a new one is announced.
- At the same time, it was announced that the recruitment process for this position has already started.
- Let's remind that Tobias Sjörgen was the CEO of Starbreeze since March 2023.
Torgny Hellström, chairman of the company's management board, directly said that implementing the designated strategy, focused on creating private and licensed brands, requires different leadership.
Although the reason for the dismissal of the former CEO wasn't stated, it seems clear -- the unsuccessful premiere of PayDay 3. The devs may find some consolation in the fact that the studio has regained profitability, despite poor sales of this shooter.
The current situation of PayDay 3 looks pretty bad, as evidenced by the numbers visible on SteamDB. In the last 24 hours, the peak was only... 378 users. For comparison, let's quote the same data regarding PayDay 2. 31,866 players were enjoying the game at the same time, giving a pretty clear indication of what a disappointment the third installment of the series turned out to be for the community.
The infamous PayDay 3 was released in September 2023. The game has been released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. Fans of the brand are eagerly anticipating the opportunity to embody the criminals from the titular gang offline, which will likely be available soon.
