Payday 3 early access PS5 issues, explained

Payday 3 entered early access on Sept. 18 for those who pre-ordered the highly anticipated FPS heist game. Early access servers rolled out smoothly for PC and Xbox, but PS5 players were not so lucky. For some reason, an earlier version of the game was rolled out for the PS5 release, meaning it was incompatible with the game’s online servers and thus unplayable.

Many Twitter users were quick to blame the developers at Starbreeze for “releasing an unfinished game,” but it seems the studio actually was not to blame for the mishap at all.

Is Payday 3 still not working on PS5?

Payday 3 should now be updated to its correct version and compatible with online servers for PS5. If you’re still having trouble launching the game on your PS5, it is because of a separate issue. On Sep 19, Sony released a patch that updated the game to the correct version, rather than the previous beta version that was erroneously released.

The game is playable now, but fans are still upset, and reasonably so. Early access for the game was only three days ahead of its regular release, so missing out on even one day of the early access you paid extra for means you missed one-third of your extra time.

What caused the Payday 3 error on PS5?

There isn’t a completely concrete answer to this, but certain elements are clear. Primarily, we know that Starbreeze was not at fault. The studio was communicative throughout the debacle, and while they didn’t do any total finger-pointing, producer Andreas Penninger did say in a tweet that the issue is out of Starbreeze’s control and that Sony is working on a fix.

When Sony did release the patch on Sep 19 that updated the game to the correct version, it was Penninger who informed the public on Twitter, not Sony. Honorably, the developer also apologized to PS5 players, even though it really does seem Starbreeze had nothing to do with the mishap.

How Sony ended up releasing an old version of the game isn’t entirely clear, so this next part is a little bit of an assumption, albeit a reasonable one. What likely happened is simply that an internal error was made with regard to updating files, and the most recent version of the game provided to Sony by Starbreeze did not end up replacing the older version before the servers went live on Sept. 18.