Payday: Crime War will shut down this December as Starbreeze look for a new publisher to relaunch with

Payday: Crime War is shutting down after being in and out of beta for quite a while. They do plan on relaunching the game with a new publisher in the future but no more details have been given at the moment. The game will be unplayable from 16th December 2019.

In-app purchases were disabled yesterday and once the 16th December arrives the game will be unavailable to play as the servers will shut down alongside stopping any other support for the game. It's not the first game to shut down this year, with it being fairly difficult to make a splash in the free-to-play market with so many options available.

The promise of relaunching the game with a different publisher implies some issues between the developers and publisher. This could be due to the game's performance commercially or Starbreeze's ongoing debt problems Gamesindustry.biz reported on yesterday. Though, this is merely speculation at this point. 

If you were an avid player of Payday: Crime War you can sign up to the newsletter on their official site to be notified of any new developments with regards to a new publisher. The game appeared to be well received by those who did play it, with over 100,000 downloads on Google Play and a 4.4-star rating on the App Store from 28 ratings.

The game has been in the works for quite some time with the first gameplay popping up over two years ago following an announcement in 2016. It was more of a 4v4 team deathmatch set up rather than having any of the heist trappings it's older sibling makes use of.

With the unopposed success of certain titles like Fortnite, PUBG and more recently Call of Duty: Mobile it's not difficult to see why other free-to-play shooters might struggle but it's still always sad to see a game get shut down. Hopefully, it can come back stronger with a new publisher involved.