Online gamers are not oblivious to server errors, particularly on launch weekends. Enthusiastic heisters that rushed to play Payday 3 were frustrated by the long queues and long waiting time it took the matchmaking servers to link them up to other players. The long waiting time did not abate even when players were matched with bots.
Solo players were not spared either. This is because Payday 3 was designed in such a way that players need to always be online. Therefore, solo heisters had to go through the same frustrations as multiplayer heisters. However, this issue appears to be peculiar to Steam—because we are yet to see the same complaint on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S.
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Beyond the long queue time, the server error also made it hard for some players to get to the main menu. When some players launched the game on Steam, they got the message “Nebula data error” which made it impossible for them to get to the main menu.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the game has a mostly negative review on Steam. The majority of the negative reviews pointed at the server issues rather than the game. One reviewer named Decoy Felinferno wrote, “Imagine waiting for an hour and ten minutes and still not being able to get into a private game”.
One of the most hilarious reviews that we read was the one left by xInfeXousx. The player wrote, “The real heist was the one Starbreeze pulled on our wallets. 48 hours since launch and servers are still crippled. Unacceptable. I enjoy this game, when it works.”
Payday 3 would have been a huge success, besides the server glitches
Apparently, Payday 3 servers crashed within 24 hours after the game’s launch. Up until September 22 (a day after the game’s launch, most players were still unable to play. Nevertheless, Payday 3 had a huge chance of being a successful release according to available statistics.
Firstly, servers crash when there is a surge of players who want to get in the game at once. Perhaps, Starbreeze and Deep Silver did not plan to have a huge number of players on launch day. The mistake the studio and publisher made was not doing a beta test ahead of launch. This would have helped them to identify server (and other) issues ahead of launch.
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So far, Payday 3 has garnered 66,142 concurrent players which placed the game at number 19 on Steam’s list of most played games as at the time of writing this post. Perhaps, if not for the server glitch, Payday 3 would have easily hit over 100,000 concurrent players in the first 24 hours of release.
Those who were lucky to get past the main menu spoke highly of the game. In one of the positive reviews, Kikuri said, “Server issues aside, this game is actually really fun in both stealth and loud. While it doesn’t play as big a part as it used to, the game still uses rng for door codes, item placements, and room locations”.
Gryhim was furious for still not being able to play the game 3 days after launch but praised the graphics saying, “…the only good thing is the graphics and that’s all”.
The possible reason for always being online in Payday 3
A week before the launch of Payday 3, the developer announced that Denuvo would be removed from the game which left analysts scratching their heads about how the studio plans to combat the proliferation of pirated copies of the game. Perhaps, being online—even for solo players—answers that question now.
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The developer has continued to keep players updated through the X platform through the game’s official handle. The latest message from the developer which came about 5 hours before this publication read,
“Status update: Things are starting to look better. We’re seeing players being able to create lobbies again and getting back in the game. You still might have a few issues, bear with us while we focus on stabilizing! Thank you heisters!”
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