Starbreeze hit with another round of layoffs

Starbreeze, the Stockholm studio behind the Payday franchise, has reportedly carried out another round of layoffs, marking the second set of redundancies in roughly two months. Given the ongoing poor performance of Payday 3, this shouldn’t be too surprising. Payday 3 currently peaks at ~650 concurrent players on Steam vs 22,000 for Payday 2.

According to an Insider Gaming report, multiple Starbreeze employees have posted on LinkedIn that they were affected. QA worker Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath wrote that “many of us” received “sad news” and that he’s now looking for a new role. Senior tech producer Sabina af Jochnick said her position had “been identified as at risk of redundancy.” Posts from other affected staff include gameplay programmer Kim Sjöberg and sound designer Mark Trusov.

The news follows layoffs last October, when Starbreeze cut around 44 employees after canceling its planned Dungeons & Dragons game-as-a-service project, codenamed Project Baxter. At the time, the studio said it would focus resources on growing its Payday franchise.

Starbreeze has also seen several leadership changes recently, including CEO shifts in 2024 and 2025. Most recently, the company appointed former EA executive Adolf Kristjansson as CEO, with Mats Juhl returning to the CFO role.