Starbreeze's IP Heist For Payday Succeeds, More Crime As Payday 3 Announced
Publisher 505 Games has been left suckerpunched and hogtied after Starbreeze Studios pulled off a franchise heist, and made off with the Payday IP. Crime pays afterall.
The developer has announced that Payday 3 is confirmed and that they will continue to support Payday 2 for another 18 months. The transfer of IP from 505 to Starbreeze also means they own it outright and will be collecting revenue retroactively from May 1st, 2016.
505 Games, in a literal case of Stockholm-syndrome (Starbreeze is Swedish), will continue to publish the console versions of Payday 2: Crimewave Edition. They will also share in the loot capped at USD $40 million.
“Payday is very close to my heart, and has laid the foundation for Starbreeze success in recent years,” said Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson in the statement. “We’re very excited to bring our heisters home to the safe house.”
Payday is developed specifically by Overkill Software which is owned by Starbreeze, so now the money-laundering is being handled in-house and not outsourced to 505 Games. The authorities will be interested to know, we're sure.
Recently an update marking the 100th update to Payday 2 revealed the game's black market was opening up to all as they move to ditch microtransactions. Starbreeze has more to share at E3 2016 in Los Angeles, with a new teaser trailer released.
