Payday developer and publisher Starbreeze has officially sanctioned Notoriety, a popular heist shooter in Roblox, that previously existed as a Payday-inspired fan game.
Notoriety will now be relaunched within Roblox as Notoriety: A Payday Experience and feature “authentic Payday assets, characters and heists”.
It’s unclear what the terms of this deal involve for both Starbreeze and Notoriety’s development teams, though Notoriety is a hugely popular – and lucrative – Roblox experience, with more than 227m visits and 1.3m favourites from players on the platform.
“Notoriety was born out of a love for heist games, with Payday serving as a key source of inspiration,” Notoriety developer Evan Pickett said in a Starbreeze press release today. “This official licensing partnership allows us to stay true to our vision while incorporating elements that fans of both Notoriety and Payday will recognise and enjoy.”
For its part, Starbreeze said it “deeply admire[s] the skill, passion, and creativity that Evan has poured into crafting Notoriety” and that licensing Payday out opened up the Payday universe to “a fresh perspective”. Hey, 227m visits means a lot of eyes on the Payday franchise.
Payday 3 launched back in October 2023 and has struggled to capture the same level of interest as its decade-old predecessor. Various game updates have followed to try and turn things around, though the project’s commercial failure has seen Starbreeze’s CEO ousted, its previous game director step down, and one employee describe its launch as “disastrous”.
“The whole stage just collapsed and everyone left,” Starbreeze community head Almir Listo said back in October. “The game just felt unfinished. It was a bad experience for our players.”