If you’ve played Payday 3 after its launch, you likely fell victim to the game’s widespread matchmaking issues since Sept. 21. Developer Starbreeze officially addressed the outages in a press release today, attributing the situation to an “unforeseen error” with the game’s third-party matchmaking system and saying it aims to make the game rely less on online services.
Payday 3 has experienced a plethora of issues with its matchmaking since its full launch last week. Players couldn’t find matches at all for most of the time, making the title effectively unplayable. The issue didn’t appear in the beta and early-access periods, Starbreeze said in a press release.
Starbreeze is “evaluating all options” to improve the user experience, both in the short term and the long term. In the long term, the developer could look for a new third-party matchmaking partner. “Making Payday 3 less dependent on online services” is also on the table, according to the press release, though it’s unclear when or how that could manifest in practice.
The widespread server issues in Payday 3 caused players to clamor for an offline mode. Having the ability to play offline could let players bypass the issues with the matchmaking services (or at least save players the trouble of having to matchmake in the first place). While the wording in the press release might hint at an offline mode, it could also refer to other corporate and software arrangements.
The server issues occurred due to an error with the matchmaking services, causing an “unrecoverable situation” for Payday 3‘s third-party matchmaking partner, according to Starbreeze. The server stability improved as the matchmaking software received updates over the weekend, finally letting heisters dive into the game as intended. The situation seems to be stabilizing.
