Payday 3 is Still in Development, But Now Runs on Unreal Engine

Payday 3 remains in development at Overkill. While the title is unlikely to launch until at least 2022, the developer has offered a new production update. Payday 3 will no longer run on the Diesel Engine; development is instead moving over to Unreal Engine.

Such news came to the fore over the weekend, courtesy of the following post from the official Payday Twitter account:

The post doesn’t offer too much in the way of concrete details about how things are progressing with Payday 3 aside from confirming it is still in development. But at least it’s unleashed what seems to be the game’s first screenshot (seen in the header image above), which is now also the Payday Twitter account’s profile image. That development is shifting to Unreal Engine seems worthy of note as well. After all, the Diesel Engine fueled both 2011’s Payday: The Heist and 2013’s Payday 2. How such a change will affect the new entry’s production going forward currently remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, this is not the only shake-up with regards to Payday 3’s creation. A wide variety of troubles at publisher Starbreeze have long beset the project’s development. It appears as though things are looking up, however. Earlier in the year, Starbreeze sought 250 million SEK ($26.8 million USD) in funds due to issues it faced in securing a publisher for Payday 3 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Evidently, Starbreeze managed to secure enough funding to proceed with the title’s development and make drastic changes in the process.

In October 2019, Starbreeze shared plans to release Payday 3 between 2022 to 2023. Whether or not this release window is still in place remains a mystery, as the tweet above simply says “Release date TBA.”

[Source: Payday Game on Twitter via PC Gamer]