Good news for all you Internet-phobes out there, and for all of you living in hermit-like abundance in the woods: the developers of Payday 3 have confirmed that the upcoming multiplayer heist-em-up will be always-online, without compromise. Fans have long speculated that this would be the case since Steam's game system specs began listing a "broadband Internet connection" as a requirement earlier this year, but in a recent stream, Starbreeze's Global Brand Director Almir Listo It was confirmed by Almir Listo, Global Brand Director of Starbreeze, in a recent stream.

"Hi Almir, does Payday 3 have an offline mode? Like solo play?" a viewer of Listo's Payday 2 stream yesterday expressed his expectations.

"You will be able to play alone," the developer replied, "but you will need to be connected to play."

The reason apparently has to do with the game's cross-progression feature; Listo justified Payday 3's always-online status by saying that it is "made with the Unreal Engine and employs cross-progression (and cross-play)" and cross-progression (and cross-play)," Listo said.

"It's a very good game," said Listo.

"Payday 1" and "Payday 2" featured an offline mode where you robbed alone with the help of an AI, so fans can't hide their excitement at the news that the third game will officially go always online. 'It's so sad to see them take this route,' said a fan named Crust on the game's Steam forum, noting that 'Payday 3 will one day be shut down' and then inaccessible. This game is on death row."

These sentiments are echoed everywhere." I think "always online" is one of the worst features for the game," commented a fan called Nooby_Chris on the Payday subreddit, which received the top vote.A player who said he understood Starbreeze's reasoning (a Reddit user) even worried about "what will happen when the game is no longer supported. Will everyone lose access to everything?" and "Will the heists be hosted like in Payday 2, or will they take place on dedicated servers?"

Other players have other complaints. Some worry that their Internet connections are unstable and that their broadband will be unavailable during the game. Some players also fear that it will mean the complete death of the Payday mod scene. While "PD2 will live forever thanks to the mods," said user ShrekDamage, "PD3 will live for months until Starbreeze goes bankrupt because of how badly they screwed this game up." While there is no particular likelihood that this will put Starbreeze out of business, this comment speaks to a real concern among members of the "Payday" community.

Still, some users welcomed the news, although almost always with some trepidation; a player named Keohane said that as long as Starbreeze's servers can handle the load, "save file portability will increase, hackers and cheaters will decrease, and any player played many times, and good telemetry on what went wrong is guaranteed. Of course, he also promised to "reprimand Starbreeze" if there were any server glitches.

This is honestly as positive a reaction as I have seen among "Payday" players, at least as far as I can tell. It remains to be seen if the number of players will decline when the game finally releases on September 21 of this year.