Payday 3

Payday 3 follows the events of Payday 2. The gang is forced out of retirement by a conspiracy plot aimed at its members, including an assassination attempt and the freezing of their assets. The new Crime.net operator, Shade, who managed to contact only five members of the crew, helps them to track down the perpetrators and locate the surviving members of the gang, while providing them jobs in and around New York City, including a bank, armored transport and a jewelry store. Through Shade, the crew also meets Pearl, an experienced con artist, who joins the Payday gang.

Developer Starbreeze Studios announced in May 2016 that Payday 3 was in development at Overkill Software, after Starbreeze acquired the rights to the intellectual property from 505 Games for around US$30 million. In March 2021, Plaion committed to pay €50 million to assist in the game's development and marketing, including more than 18 months of post-launch support using the games as a service model. Payday 3 was developed using Unreal Engine 4, but was upgraded to use Unreal Engine 5 on August 2026. On January 1, 2023, a teaser trailer titled A New Criminal Dawn was released, revealing its logo.

Console versions are also the same version as the game on PC platforms, unlike its predecessor. Overkill states that this is due to the game being created using the Unreal Engine. In June, Overkill announced that the game would release on September 18, 2023 for people who had pre-ordered the Silver and Gold editions, while the standard edition would release on September 21.

Payday 3 received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. In Japan, four critics from Famitsu gave the game a total score of 30 out of 40.

Vikki Blake, writing for Eurogamer, called it "a shallow shooter that doesn't offer anywhere near enough bang for your ill-gotten buck." Travis Northup, writing for IGN, wrote that "Payday 3's cooperative heists are off to a strong start, even if the vault is a bit bare at the moment." Giovanni Colantonio, in a review for Digital Trends, said that "Payday 3 doesn't shake up its predecessor's formula much, but a strong batch of initial heists sets the live service shooter up for success."