After Payday 3‘s poor performance and Plaion’s Q4 year-end report, Starbreeze CEO Torgny Hellström announced that he would not be available for re-election at the 2024 Annual General Meeting and following that December announcement, the CEO has been given the boot.
After an abysmal Q4 financial report for Payday 3‘s performance, Starbreeze, the maker of the Payday franchise, has decided to go in a different direction with leadership moving forward. This is after the fact that Payday 2 continues to outperform Payday 3 on steam charts, and following a difficult period of instability, has said they ‘need new leadership’ in a notice to investors. The report comes from Starbreeze themselves, and Juergen Goeldner has been appointed as interim CEO while the company moves on from Torgny Hellström.
Former Starbreeze CEO Torgny Hellström said, “The company has a clear strategy centred around creating attractive games on our own and licensed IPs,” with “The board’s consolidated assessment is that the execution of strategy needs a different leadership.” Hellström then vouched for his replacement by saying, “Juergen Goeldner has been part of the board since 2023 and, with over 40 years of industry experience, is a strong interim solution.”
Massive server issues and congestion were the culprits of the initial poor numbers produced by Payday 3, with many reviews (Payday 3 sits at 66% on Metacritic and a 3.1 user rating) saying the title’s server problems make it nearly impossible to play. The new interim CEO, Juergen Goeldner, said, “Starbreeze has a strong history of developing and publishing games globally. After launching Payday 3, the company is well-positioned to leverage the strengths of the organization to monetize and develop the IP portfolio. I am looking forward to assuming an operative position and, together with the management, ensure the execution of this strategy.”
As Starbreeze continues to navigate the fallout from the poor performance of Payday 3, no other comments have been made yet regarding the leadership shakeup at Starbreeze.
