Swedish publisher Starbreeze has published an optimistic, and brief, financial estimation revealing it expects Payday 3 to come out sometime between 2022 and 2023. After a disastrous 2018, the company believes it’ll see an uptick in revenue starting in 2020 with new publishing agreements for Payday projects.
In a press release (via Eurogamer, cheers!), Starbreeze provided an estimated cash flow that shows finances increasing year-on-year between now and 2023, pending some “expected events”. These include new publishing contracts for Payday: Crime War, a mobile game, and Payday 3, both of which are en route to be signed and sorted in the first half of 2020.
Starbreeze has been effectively splitting itself in two amid a complete company reconstruction. Personnel and assets have been split between two arms, New Starbreeze Publishing AB and New Starbreeze Studios AB. Publishing, which now holds all their IP, will be the lynch-pin of their cash flow going forward. The post states that, in an evaluation from a major international accounting firm, Payday was valued at several times that of the rest of their assets combined.
This comes as Starbreeze was left limping after the calamitous launch of 2018’s Overkill’s The Walking Dead. Lackluster sales of what was expected to be a blockbuster release forced the company to begin reconstruction in late 2018, as CEO Bo Anderrson stepped down. Starbreeze had to sell some of its publishing rights, including Psychonauts 2, to try and mitigate the financial damage, and is currently in the middle of its third extension as part of the restructuring process.
According to the post, a full reconstruction plan is in the works, and with it a strategy to approach creditors and set up repayment plans to settle all outstanding debt. As the update notes, this is not a forecast, but merely a cash flow estimate.
With any luck, we’ll get something more concrete on Payday 3 come early 2020.