Troubled Swedish games firm Starbreeze has said it is looking for a "good" publishing partner for Payday 3 in the coming year.
In the company's financial report for the three months ending September 2019, acting CEO Mikael Nermark said that the developer and publisher is seeking someone "as committed to Payday as we are." Given that this IP is more or less the only big IP that Starbreeze boasts these days, we can imagine that the Swedish firm is betting big on a new release in the Payday franchise doing the numbers.
Earlier this year, the company valued the Payday IP at close to $162.3m. The firm is hoping to develop the brand further over the next decade, too.
"With the focusing of the business, and primarily on Payday, our goal is clear," Nermark said.
"Our focused efforts are showing effect all over our organisation, which is already shown in what is being produced. The work with Payday 3, our most important future product, has intensified and we are reworking the design phase.
"We are preparing to find a good publishing partner in 2020. The key word here is 'partner'. We are looking for someone as committed to Payday as we are, a company that can help us further develop the brand over the next ten years. Our contacts with potential publishing partners in recent years, and especially in the last 12 months, have demonstrated the strength of the brand and I am confident that we are going to find the right ally for the future."
This follows the company going into administration in December 2018, going on to sell off many of the publishing rights it had acquired over the years in an attempt to stem losses. Starbreeze is currently in its third reconstruction extension period.
For the last quarter, Payday was behind kr17.5m ($1.8m) of Starbreeze's net sales. In total, the company brought in kr21.1m ($2.2m), a 38 per cent decrease. The firm's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) metric saw a loss of kr10.9m ($1.14m), less than half the kr37.9m ($3.95m) that was reported for the same period last year.
