Starbreeze
More info
- Released
- 1998
- Type
- Game developer, publisher
A Swedish studio that made Riddick and Payday, bet the house on VR and ended up in court-supervised reconstruction.
Starbreeze built an early reputation for licensed games that were better than licensed games had any right to be: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (2004) and The Darkness (2007). Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013), directed by Josef Fares, proved it could do quiet too. In 2012 it acquired Overkill Software, and with it the heist series Payday.
The Payday 2 money then went into the StarVR headset, VR arcades and publishing deals. When Overkill's The Walking Dead flopped in 2018 the company filed for reconstruction, a textbook case of diversifying too fast. Payday 3 (2023) launched with server trouble, a reminder that an online game is only as good as its login.