The arrival of Payday 3 has been plagued by server problems, leaving the game inaccessible at various times across its launch weekend.

Payday 3 was released on Thursday last week for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, including via Xbox Game Pass. But as player numbers climbed, the game quickly got into problems.

Now, in a statement issued this morning, the boss of Payday 3 developer Starbreeze said he was "disappointed" in how his company's big new launch had landed - and largely pointed the finger at an unnamed third-party matchmaking service for causing the game to fall over.

"Payday 3 matchmaking infrastructure has not performed as tested and expected," Starbreeze wrote. "Matchmaking software encountered an unforeseen error, which made it unable to handle the massive influx of players. The issue caused an unrecoverable situation for Starbreeze’ third-party matchmaking partner.

"A new version of the matchmaking server software was gradually deployed across all regions leading to improved performance. However, a software update made by the partner during late Sunday again introduced instability to the matchmaking infrastructure. The partner continues to work to improve and stabilise Payday 3's online systems."

Starbreeze said that, despite the issues, Payday 3 had a peak of 218,250 players at one point over the weekend, and 1.3 million unique players who have given the game a go at some point since launch.

The issues this weekend arose due to the rapid influx of new users, Starbreeze also said, something the game's early access and beta periods failed to flag.

"In the short-term, this means Starbreeze's focus is to ensure the player experience," the company concluded. "In the long-term, this means evaluating a new partner for matchmaking services and making Payday 3 less dependent on online services."

You can keep track of Payday 3's server status via the game's account on X, formerly Twitter, where there's been a flurry of updates over the past few days.

"We are disappointed in the issues our playerbase has faced during our launch weekend, but we are confident in our core product and the quality of Payday 3 - and all available metrics point to it," Starbreeze boss Tobias Sjögren stated. "We have a lot of diligent and consistent work ahead of us to regain community trust, but we will work hard to do it."