After Ubisoft - Starbreeze: Payday 3 Creators Are Losing Employees
Just hours after Ubisoft announced a major restructuring, the closure of studios in Stockholm and Halifax, and the cancellation of the Prince of Persia remake, reports of a new wave of layoffs have surfaced - this time at Starbreeze, the studio behind Payday 3.
The company has not made any official statements, but employees have begun sharing information on social media, indicating the seriousness of the situation.
Signals of the reductions appeared on LinkedIn, where developers started looking for new jobs. Alexander Peresvetoff-Morath from the quality assurance department reported that "many" team members received layoff notices, and he himself expects the same. Senior Technical Producer Sabina af Jochnick also confirmed that her position was deemed at risk, forcing her to start looking for a new job.
Starbreeze's problems have been ongoing for years, but the current situation looks like the culmination of a protracted crisis. The studio is experiencing the consequences of the unsuccessful launch of Payday 3: despite fixes and free updates, the game has failed to regain the audience's trust. This is also reflected in Steam statistics — if the online peak reached almost 78,000 people on release day, it now rarely exceeds a few hundred.
An additional blow to the company's finances was the cancellation at the end of 2025 of an ambitious project under the Dungeons & Dragons license, which then led to the dismissal of dozens of employees.
