WARDOGS
WARDOGS
Game
Game2023
PAYDAY 3
Developer Starbreeze Studios
Payday 3 is a 2023 cooperative first-person shooter game developed and published by Starbreeze Studios. The game was formerly published by Deep Silver. The game is a sequel to Payday 2, and is the third installment in the Payday series. It was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 21 September 2023. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
546 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
70
Fresh
292 positive · 124 negative
95% range 66–74%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 292 | 124 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 22 | 30 | 62 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 11 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 3 | 2 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
18,904 of 41,781 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
68% recommend · 193 yes, 89 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 282 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mixed (30,696 of 66,144 positive).
Many players say the game has improved significantly since its rough launch. [1][2][3][4] Some reviewers still criticize the lack of content and reliance on paid DLC. [5][6][7][8] A few players dislike the always-online requirement and fear server shutdowns. [9][10][11]
Liked
Representative posts
- [9]
It doesn't matter if the game finally gets good or not, it's a game with an expiration date, meaning that if the servers permanently shut down there's no way to play the game again. Also remember why the game is always online in the first place, (They lied to us and yet they want to be more transparent.) because they planned to add microtransactions, but that got leaked and they had to lazily scrap it because nobody …
- [11]
I think Payday 3 is fun. I think it has improved quite a lot since launch. However, I cannot, in good conscience, give this game a recommendation. I have been patient with this game. I've played it despite its flaws, despite being a clearly inferior game to both its predecessors. I've waited through all the controversies for the game to get better. And it has gotten better: we've had Armor 2.0 which actually made …
- [1]
Stop looking at the launch reviews, it’s actually good now I get it. I was annoyed at launch too. The servers were busted, the progression system felt like a total grind, and it honestly felt like a unfinished mess. I uninstalled it and almost never looked back. But I jumped back in a few weeks ago and it’s night and day compared to what it was at release. First off, they finally fixed the progression. You actually …
- [3]
Credit where credit is due because Payday 3 has had such a turnaround from when it released. It brings all the adrenaline and edge of your seat action of Payday 2 with EXTREMELY satisfying gunplay. It looks beautiful, it runs well, it's polished, the difficulty is rewarding, the music is brilliant, stealth is miles above PD2 in terms of complexity. And the talents and level reworks they've been doing have hit the …
- [6]
Need more free heists. Barely seen a game where you have to pay for the game and the missions inside of it as well, it's like buying a demo. Glad I got it on sale, if not I wouldn't recommend this to anybody. It's fun on multiplayer, but that's about all there is to it, and enjoy the demo missions they gave you.
Summarised from 34 of the 383 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 11, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
68% of the 282 Steam reviewers we collected recommend PAYDAY 3. The complaint that keeps coming up: the game lacks enough free heists and content. Deal-breaker or nitpick?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Payday 3 received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. In Japan, four critics from Famitsu gave the game a total score of 30 out of 40. Vikki Blake, writing for Eurogamer, called it "a shallow shooter that doesn't offer anywhere near enough bang for your ill-gotten buck." Travis Northup, writing for IGN, wrote that "Payday 3's cooperative heists are off to a strong start, even if the vault is a bit bare at the moment." Giovanni Colantonio, in a review for Digital Trends, said that "Payday 3 doesn't shake up its predecessor's formula much, but a strong batch of initial heists sets the live service shooter up for success." Upon launch,…
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 546 · most liked firstTo my brother, whom I convinced to preorder the game aswell... I am terribly sorry.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It doesn't matter if the game finally gets good or not, it's a game with an expiration date, meaning that if the servers permanently shut down there's no way to play the game again. Also remember why the game is always online in the first place, (They lied to us and yet they want to be more transparent.) because they planned to add microtransactions, but that got leaked and they had to lazily scrap it because nobody liked it. (Witch I find humiliating because they did something similar with…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I last played this game on 6 November 2025. Today I decided to install the game again, and I expected to see new things in the game, but I only see 3 new masks, 0 new heists, 0 new weapons, and 0 new gloves and clothes, but there is a huge new section in the lobby just for players to spend money and buy DLC inside it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I enjoy the game but only reason i will downvote is because that the game requires online to play, if the developers release offline i will change this review
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →When implementing Payday 3, the devs must've looked back at Payday 2 and thought "less is more", and they really ran with that because Payday 3 despite being a sequel is so much lesser than Payday 2. Payday 3 builds on Payday 2 by taking away basically everything. There are 22 achievements, contrasted to the 1300+ of Payday 2. There is no infamy level, so once you've hit level cap that's that. There is nothing really to unlock because the game just hands everything to you. We're three years in…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I think Payday 3 is fun. I think it has improved quite a lot since launch. However, I cannot, in good conscience, give this game a recommendation. I have been patient with this game. I've played it despite its flaws, despite being a clearly inferior game to both its predecessors. I've waited through all the controversies for the game to get better. And it has gotten better: we've had Armor 2.0 which actually made armor interesting to use, and we've also had Skills 2.0, which removed the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Stop looking at the launch reviews, it’s actually good now I get it. I was annoyed at launch too. The servers were busted, the progression system felt like a total grind, and it honestly felt like a unfinished mess. I uninstalled it and almost never looked back. But I jumped back in a few weeks ago and it’s night and day compared to what it was at release. First off, they finally fixed the progression. You actually get rewarded for playing the game and finishing heists now instead of doing…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Payday 3 isn't a terrible game. It introduces some genuinely good ideas and improves parts of the formula, but it often feels like it was developed by a team that didn't fully understand what made Payday so memorable. Comparing Payday 3 to a game with over 10 years of updates isn't, by itself, why it has so many negative reviews. The lack of content is not the only part of the problem. In my opinion, the biggest issue is that Payday 3 lost much of the identity that made the franchise stand out.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The gunplay is decent. The heists can be fun. The graphics are nice. The masks look cool. The servers occasionally acknowledge my existence. But there is one catastrophic, unforgivable flaw that completely ruins the experience: WHERE IS SOKOL? I have checked every heist. I have checked every safehouse. I have checked under every table. I have interrogated several civilians. SOKOL IS NOT THERE. For those unfamiliar with PAYDAY 2, Sokol is a Russian hockey player turned…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My patience is at an end. The game developers are deliberately trying to ruin Payday 3. It has so much potential to be better than Payday 2. It got off to a bad start, but the developers have made it even worse. It was fun at times, with the hope that the game would get better. But there are still many problems that haven't been solved, and more problems were added with each patch. Especially the payday3.exe crash, which mainly occurs when the graphics card driver is not updated. But that's…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Payday 3 has better graphics and gun play movement etc . What Payday 3 lacks is content, we need more free maps and guns and enemy types to make it fun to play devs listen please
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Horrible launch, decent recovery, hopefully it gets better from here.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game took a cherished, beloved IP—one that’s been long overdue for a new release—and turned it into nothing more than a blatant cash grab. Easily one of the biggest disappointments I’ve ever endured in gaming. Thanks for absolutely nothing, Starbreeze.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →"Hey Guys, wanna try that new payday game that came out?" > Den of Wolves isn't out yet, is it? "No I meant Payday 3! Silly." > You mean the "payday" game that I had to kill thousands to level a single weapon a bit, and had to do that on repeat just to have a skill tree? "Nooo, they fixed that! Now you level normally!" > Ohh, so just the game where armor is a finite and ♥♥♥♥ resource to manage then? "Nope, we fixed that too with Armor 2.0 (finally!)" > Really? Neat! So the guns don't feel so…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game definitely does not deserve a "Mixed" rating at this point in time. The amount of work that's gone into this game since launch is staggering. They've even *switched engines* ffs, and it runs way smoother now than it ever did. At present this should be one of the top coop experiences of 2026 once you get a team going.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I gotta say. This is a watered down payday 2. I am so shocked that after ALL THIS TIME they still haven't really made this into a playable game and still selling cosmetics and DLCS. The solo mode is a pile of poop cause the AI are so bad and stupid they are basically worthless. All the missions and heists are so forgettable and no where NEAR as fun and memorable as payday 2. As of right now on 5/27/2026 I do not recommend payday 3. Please buy payday 2 and have literally 500 thousand times more…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was one of Payday 3 most avid defender, but there's no saving grace for this title. - Gets updated maybe once every 3/4 months with very little to add to the game - Every update in the last year has been a 7,49€ mid "heist" - No meaningful weapon updates/re-balance since forever - No new cosmetics since last year - Nothing to work for, leveling up feels meaningless for someone who's already max level - No new achievements since launch in 2023, literally removed all challenges from the game…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm going to put as much effort into this review as Starbreeze does trying to save this game. Piss-poor launch day, crippled by the unnecessary Online-Only aspect of the game and forced Starbreeze Nebula sign in and log in. Gunplay feels good, Stealth was improved, everything else is shoddy. Was fun for the first 50 hours or so, not so much after that. Heist variation is shallow and doesn't feel good to complete after many clears. Music... subjective. Overall, a severe side-downgrade from…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Credit where credit is due because Payday 3 has had such a turnaround from when it released. It brings all the adrenaline and edge of your seat action of Payday 2 with EXTREMELY satisfying gunplay. It looks beautiful, it runs well, it's polished, the difficulty is rewarding, the music is brilliant, stealth is miles above PD2 in terms of complexity. And the talents and level reworks they've been doing have hit the sweet spot. It feels unfair to compare the amount of content in this to its…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Payday 3 - is a perfect example of when developers take on too much and promise too much, but end up delivering something that's just “ well, whatever.” To give you an overview of the scale of the game's failure, the second part continues to be played by an average of several tens of thousands of players, while this part does not even reach approximately 1,000 players. Mods saved the game: people fixed everything that the developers had ruined and added everything that should have been in the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game handles microtransactions like it's 2012, a lot of maps and weapons behind paywall, you need to buy the game bit by bit which is unacceptable for today's standards, it's like they never learned from the whole Evolve turning point fiasco because it wasn't the game to be bad, it was the content behind paywall that got the community to die fast. Again, Payday 3 is good fun and I really like the fact that enemies are not sponges anymore even with the strongest weapon headhots, but this is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i think the game is fun now compared to when it was in Beta and launch, the only reason i'm giving it a thumbs down is i spent $90 on pre-order, and the games lack of content at the moment, i have high hopes for PD3 i really do, but i would stick with PD2 for now.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted this game to be so good, but its inferior to Payday 2 in almost everyway.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The lesson here kids is just because it has the brand name doesn't guarantee the quality of the prior entries.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →not bad, its no payday 2 but it is a solid game recovering from a horrible launch
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I have around 1000 hours in Payday 2. Many bugs from Payday 3 launch have been fixed, the armor system has been reworked, skills have been reworked, Gold & Sharke WiFi hacking has been reworked (thankfully), lockpicking has been updated to be more interesting, p2p matchmaking is about to be implemented. The music by Gustavo is fantastic, Pearl is a great addition to the roster with her stealth dialogues, gunplay is pretty good like in PD2, and compared to PD2, there are a lot of QoL features…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It had a notoriously rough launch, and I totally understand why the early reviews were so brutal. But if you look at where the game is now compared to day one, it’s night and day. The developers actually stuck with it, overhauled the clunky progression systems, completely reworked the skills, and kept pushing out steady updates, quality-of-life patches, and new contracts. The core gunplay and heist mechanics have always felt fantastic, but it’s finally grown into the solid, well-made crime…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Truly a disgrace to the payday franchise. The only thing they had to do to make this a payday 2 sequence was expand on the pre planning feature from payday 2, continue with high stakes heists and RNG. Instead, we get a sorry excuse for pre planning, that removes all of the "Planning" part and half of the missions are just boring warehouses, bland and unispiring, really makes you wonder why even bother to make the game in UE4 if they managed to make more impressive levels in the broken mess of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted PAYDAY 3 to succeed. The gameplay itself isn't the problem. Gunplay feels good, stealth is a genuine improvement over PAYDAY 2 in many ways, and the visuals are exactly what you'd expect from a modern sequel. The problem is that everything around that foundation feels smaller. There are fewer heists, fewer weapons, less customization, simpler skill builds, less replayability, and far fewer reasons to keep playing. After completing each heist in loud and stealth a few times,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game had a really rough launch 2 years ago. After playing 200 hours of PD3, trust me: it has gotten SO much better since launch. Yes, it still has problems, specifically in terms of performance. It seems to have lag 'hiccups' where it will freeze for a second and then resume like nothing happened. Honestly not a huge issue, just something I've noticed. The game could also use more content in almost everything (more weapons, masks, heists, characters, enemy types, skills/perks,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →But Officer... I'm simply good at being bad. We got PAYDAY 3 on the docket for today's stream at 6 PM ET to celebrate the release of the Year 1 Edition. You can pick up the game for yourself here, and let's get this job done! t.paydaythegame.com/c/jen9tp #ad #sponsored
neutral · AI labelView post →1. lie to your playerbase 2. sell them unfinished garbage 3. garbage unplayable 4. playerbase dose not play your "game" and none of the 420 tailor packs have ben sold 5. no money >:( 6. sell a subscription service to you other playable game to not go bankrupt Just pack it up lil bro >First person shooter >terrible gun play , terrible weapon progression and lack of choice you basicly chose one gun form you favorite category IE smg sniper shotgun and main the one of three(3)(III) weapons that…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →When the game first came out, it kind of deserved the hate it got. It had virtually no content, compared to Payday 2. It didn't really offer anything new, except an updated engine. Came back to it months later, and it's been a blast, if i'm honest. Though, i'm playing Solo because Quickplay never finds anyone. because there's only 800 people playing the game. I think Payday 3 needs to drop a few free-weekends, and keep doing some sales. If people give it a chance, they'll see there's plenty…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As someone who has a thousand or 2 hours on Xbox 360 Payday 2, I instantly preordered the Gold Edition Payday 3 on day one for $89.99. Unfortunately, after roughly 20hrs, I found myself extremely disappointed and stopped playing the game for just about 3 years. Fast forward to today, and after returning to the game and logging over 120+hrs, I can confidently say that Payday 3 is a completely different experience than launch. The improvements have been substantial, and in my opinion, the game…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →feel kinda like an idiot for saying it but i really enjoy this, and i question if my taste is bad or if people are just too harsh on this game. i played the beta and at launch and yeah i didnt like it either. fast forward few years later and this game is honestly a good time now in my opinion. is it better then payday 2? absolutely not but i think the game is still enjoyable. theres alot of QoL and really cool features this game has that makes me wanna keep coming back to it, and unlike payday…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game itself is fine; I’d even say it is fun. It is definitely better than I expected, coming from Payday 2. After all, all you hear about this game is bad things. I would love to recommend this game, but there is one thing that absolutely destroys it. The absolutely awful matchmaking/lobby system destroys the game. It is the worst I have ever seen in my entire life. Downright unusable! Every single developer who worked on this part of the game should simply be ashamed of themselves. I’ll…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Need more free heists. Barely seen a game where you have to pay for the game and the missions inside of it as well, it's like buying a demo. Glad I got it on sale, if not I wouldn't recommend this to anybody. It's fun on multiplayer, but that's about all there is to it, and enjoy the demo missions they gave you.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Impossible to log in due to never sending a code. It's to late for a refund, so all I can do is hopefully convince one person to not buy this game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love Payday2. I waited years for PD3, and even longer for it be updated to Payday2 content level. It wasn't worth it. The some changes are good, but I wouldnt recommend if you want more Payday2.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As someone who has been playing Payday 2 & 3 since launch, don't bother with this piece of ♥♥♥♥. This game is boring, repetitive, lacking in content, flawed (online-only), and not improving at all aside from bugfixes & UI changes (it's been 2 years). The only compliments I can give this game are: Gustavo Coutinho's music is great, Jacket's Sociopath overskill weapon is fun, faces & hair don't look as scuffed compared to Payday 2, and the new Wolf VA is good. That's it. I had hope for this…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →game's fine nowadays but the ue5 upgrade tanked performance very hard and it annoys me greatly. my poor, poor cpu. it's crying, starbreeze. i hear it weeping every time an assault wave begins. please fix.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'll be honest, this game is pretty good fun and honestly for having such a horrible launch it recovered quite well but it doesn't live up to being a true successor to payday 2 (At least not quite yet). The skill trees, weapon customization, masks, heists and just basically the entire game feel like they are watered down versions of payday 2. The gameplay itself is so much better but everything else around it is so ♥♥♥♥ its just not something that in good conscious i could recomend at full…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not a good game for solo players. Need 3rd party account to play solo Ai teammates don't throw their bags into the van to get more Cops are either brainless or unkillable 1/3 maps and a lot of equipment are dlc L
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Tragic, I loved Payday 2 and waited years for this. it's not a bad game its fine its just not Payday. If this were any other game but Payday 3 I would've welcomed it but this is not the successor to my all time favorite game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not waiting for new updates... except one when devs will announce deleting this crap and start to return our money back to us. To be clear, I don't regret buying PayDay 3. I regret not refunding it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is just no longer the game I even purchased and is riddled with cripplingly bad balancing decisions that are fueled entirely by Reddit being terrible at video games. Every single update just reduces any difficulty the game has further and further, to the point it just does not exist. Mechanics are inserted haphazardly without any consideration for the game design. Over half the paid DLC Heists are terrible and not worth any money. The core progression is terrible and just lacks a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So I don't usually write reviews to game unless they really impress me or they disappoint me completely, sadly, this is one of the later cases so let me begin with my issues towards the game: - I wasn't really waiting for this game to be honest, I was thinking from the beginning it's a bad idea to push out another game when payday never needed a "new game", it just needed some update to it's second game to keep it up to date visually and mechanically. - I've played payday 2 for a very long…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →PAYDAY 3 doesn't feel fun to play. Granted, I didn't play much of this game so take my review with a grain of salt. That being said, on the other hand nothing about this game inspired me to play it more. I think if you had a full team of friends to play with it would probably be a lot more fun. My experience with the game thus far has been with random people and I haven't found much to enjoy about it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm sorry guys but this is just not worth it anymore, I had spent hours playing this game, hoping one day it would became better, but given how the situation is going, the game might shut down sooner or later. Though I hate to see a game that I used to put so much love into, turned into broken promises. Though it had updated gunplay and stealth-ing, but with a handful of heist and guns, it became dull real quick. I mean just look at the SteamDB players chart of PD2 and PD3, it's like day and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Everyone can agree the launch was bad, but from the time I put in (both solo and with friends) I can confidently say the game is in a really enjoyable state Only gripe i have is that they seem to be putting a lot more into DLC then free content (Guns, cosmetics, heists, etc etc.) Which isn't the greatest.. But hey, if your game flopped that bad on launch you gotta make money back somehow - Servers are very stable, I've never ran into connection issues - Gunplay is a ton of fun, the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is nothing like Payday 2. This is genuinely the biggest waste of my money but sadly I cannot refund it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I swear to god it's actually good now and I think it's worth giving them another chance. It still needs some work, but the strong foundations were already there from launch and they've made the right changes to core systems that prove they still know what they're doing. Always online is still a requirement, even when playing solo, so be mindful of that Heists have a lot of variety, stealth is fun and engaging, and the lack of concealment system from payday 2 means your loadout isn't…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Despite being a pretty shameful display on release, there is now definitely fun to be had playing PAYDAY 3.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really like how the game fundamentals work by now. It feels good to play. But the extremely slow trickle of content means there is not much to do. I understand that Payday 3 heists seem to be more complex than most Payday 2 heists, especially compared to the early days of PD2 everyone talks about, where there were new FREE heists constantly. Those were quite simple in most cases. There NEEDS to be more content though, both paid and free. No, tailor packs do not count as content. With them…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Although the game has improved since launch, some of the design choices are “interesting” or downright bad. The devs seemingly don’t playtest anything, or if they do, it’s on the lowest difficulty. The balance is very hit or miss, especially when doing loud solo heists, since the bots seemingly have the mental capacity of a 3-year-old, the speed of a sloth, the survival instincts of a panda, and can’t hit the broad side of a barn. They will almost always just stand out in the open waiting to be…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →While I wasn't here for the launch, this game in 2026 is actually very enjoyable and loads of fun. My only complaint is that there's a bit too little content, so the game may get stale quickly. Outside of that, this is great.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has had a fairly rough release. It has changed alot sure, I wouldn't call it a Cyberpunk 2077 kind of comeback but you should atleast give it a try if you're a fan of heisting games.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's crazy that Starbreeze spends time to get a Rickroll QR Code into Payday 3, but can't build a functional game before the release date they set.
negative · AI labelView post →The gameplay itself is pretty good, the skill system also got an improvement. It just needs more content and better storytelling
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Starting today, I'm taking on the responsibilities of Game Director on PAYDAY 3. Please look forward to the cool things the team has in store for 2024.
neutral · AI labelView post →
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