Things are so bad for Payday 3 at this point, even Crime Boss: Rockay City is making fun of it
Starbreeze recently handed Payday 2 off to a new studio, Sidetrack Games, so it can focus its efforts on salvaging the mess that is Payday 3. Whether Payday 3 can be saved is a wide open question, but as a new trailer for an entirely different game makes painfully clear, it sure doesn't look good right now.
The trailer in question is for update 18 of Crime Boss: Rockay City, and we might as well get this out of the way first: Yes, Crime Boss: Rockay City has had 18 updates since it launched in June 2024, yes it's still running, and yes, people are still playing it—not many people, no, but some. (More on this later.)
Its continuing survival is notable because Rockay City brings a genuinely impressive cast of C-tier celebrities to the table—Michael Madsen, Chuck Norris, Michael Rooker, Danny Glover, Danny Trejo, Kim Basinger, and Vanilla Ice—and yet is one of the most utterly mid-tier, 'why did they make this' videogames ever. It's not flat-out bad, mind, but as PC Gamer editor Wes Fenlon put it in a 2023 preview, Rockay City feels like the kind of game Uwe Boll would've turned into a movie."
Anyway, back to the trailer: It looks like a fairly straight-ahead gameplay trailer, with generic first-person shooting laid over a pumping backbeat, but if you pay attention you might notice an odd repetition to it.
Saws and drills won't cut it for this one... ????????The new Afterburner heist is available now with free update 18! ????The third Break the Bank community event is well underway, so go start up Crime Boss! https://t.co/fibGO1hIcR pic.twitter.com/Tjxkg17QWqNovember 4, 2025
Weird, right? But it's not just weird: There's a significance to the style, noticed by Viper04191 on X: "The most diabolical thing about this trailer is how it references the horrendous Payday 3 Party Powder heist trailer that got quickly removed, edited and reuploaded after people pointed out how they used the same clip of the player walking into the vault 5 different times." (They later corrected to note that the trailer in question was actually for Payday 3's Delivery Charge update.)
I missed that particular bump in the road but a quick search reveals that sure enough, Starbreeze did in fact drop a Payday 3: Delivery Charge trailer back in September that has the viewer entering the same goddamn vault five separate times.
PAYDAY 3: Delivery Charge Gameplay Trailer from r/paydaytheheist
Starbreeze quickly pulled the trailer, as Viper04191 said, and then uploaded a new version, and to its credit the studio handled the situation with good humor, promoting the updated video as "now with less vault!"
And now it looks like Rockay City developer Ingame Studios is getting in on the comedy action. I can't swear with absolute certainty that the update 18 video is a poke at Payday 3, but I'd sure bet on it. Five vaults? That's a little too much of a coincidence for me.
Honestly, I like the video: It's self-serving—this is probably the most attention Rockay City has been given since before it launched—but subtle, clever, and funny enough to get away with it. Less happily, though, it also throws into relief just how bad things have gotten for Payday 3. After all, when Crime Boss: Rockay City is stunting on you, you know you've got troubles.
That's evident on SteamDB too. Payday 3 is putting up better player numbers than Rockay City, but not as much as you'd expect: As I write this, just 253 people are playing Rockay City, which is not great—but Payday 3 is just a half-step ahead, with 268 players.
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