The Payday IP saw a decline in sales year-on-year for the financial quarter.

That's according to publisher Starbreeze, which noted in its report for the three months ending March 31st, 2022 that sales from the franchise dropped 15.9 per cent from SEK22.6 million ($2.2 million) to SEK19 million ($1.9 million) year-on-year.

CEO Tobias Sjögren (pictured) says there's a few perfectly logical explanations for this; for one there was so much sales activity in the previous quarter – when Starbreeze was celebrating the Payday IP's tenth anniversary – that it's natural for sales to dip slightly.

"The decline in PC sales is related to a number of factors," he wrote.

"A strong end to 2021 linked to activities carried out at the end of the year such as the tenth anniversary of the Payday IP and the 8th anniversary of Payday 2 likely had a dampening effect on sales in the first quarter. A return to a more normal way of life after the previous Covid restrictions probably meant that sales fell slightly, while the turmoil we see around us and the atrocities we see in Ukraine, in particular, create uncertainty. We have also seen an increase in the volume of game releases over the past six months, leading to increased competition for players' attention.

"In the coming quarters, we will continue to release high-quality content for Payday 2 at a higher frequency than in 2021, and also packaged as larger bundles to ensure that we maintain high sales going
forward."

Payday 2 is still drawing a huge crowd with Sjögren saying the title boasted a peak monthly active user figure of 800,000 players for the quarter. Starbreeze is also working on a brand new project, alongside Payday 3, which is set to launch in 2025.