NOTE: All content included in these blogs is subject to change, as the game is still under development.

Hello Heisters,

Welcome to the first developer blog update for PAYDAY Crime War!

Community At The Heart

We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Starbreeze to bring the world of PAYDAY to your mobile device! Since we took over the game’s development here at PopReach last year, we’ve been blown away by the excitement and passionate feedback we’ve received from PAYDAY’s amazing community. As massive fans of PAYDAY ourselves, we want to make sure we deliver an authentic Payday experience that excites the community and introduces the world of PAYDAY to new heisters around the world! That’s why we feel it’s important to involve you in the development process to share early feedback, and help us make a kickass game.

In December, we started with a small closed multiplayer beta test to test our all-new multiplayer networking and PvP gameplay. We anticipated a few thousand players but ended up with over 20,000 registrations! Huge thanks to all those who participated. Since then, our team has been hard at work making improvements to the game based on all the feedback we’ve received, and, as we work towards release, we want to continue to provide ways for our community to see what is changing and be involved in the conversation. That’s why we’ve decided to start this monthly developer blog, to give you an inside look into the process and start community discussions on upcoming features of the game.

The History Of Crime War

When Starbreeze began the development of PAYDAY Crime War way back in 2016, they saw it as an opportunity to create a PvP PAYDAY experience for the first time: classic cops vs. robbers, with players strapping on SWAT helmets to take on the heisters. The game evolved a lot over its development until it was finally soft-launched in 2019, when it was unfortunately shut down because of publishing issues. As PAYDAY fans ourselves, we still saw massive potential in this game, so we jumped at the opportunity to get our hands in there and give it a second chance.

Even though the original PAYDAY Crime War was close to release, since years have passed, we identified that much of the initial core infrastructure of the game felt dated. The mobile shooter genre has also grown immensely over that time, with many AAA shooters making their way to mobile. To deliver a shooter experience that can meet the rapidly growing expectations of mobile players, much of the core gameplay systems needed reworking. To meet the demands of a modern mobile shooter while being able to run smoothly on a range of mobile devices, we realized that even if it would have been ideal to clean up the old game and release it as-is and get the game to the players fast, we want to make sure to launch a game that feels relevant and can have a long sustainable future, as PAYDAY 2 has had.