After Payday 3's disastrous launch, Starbreeze partners up with an Australian studio to lend its 'expertise in release management' to a Fortnite Island
Timing is an art.
Payday 3 is in a rocky state. Its launch was dreadful, its fans are angry, and its promised patch keeps getting punted further and further into the future (though for what sounds like a good reason). There's only one thing to do if you're a developer in this dicey situation: launch a Fortnite Island. It's the oldest trick in the book.
Turtle vs Turtle is a new island in Epic's mega-popular battle royale/concert venue/metaverse/dark portent of the world that is to come, and promises a PvP experience focused on "two giant moving battle platforms." The game splits players into two teams, scaling from 1v1 to 8v8, and challenges them to "gather resources around
the map to fund the building of turrets and defenses, and in order to take out their opponents' platform while protecting their own."
To be clear, Turtle vs Turtle is only being "launched" by Starbreeze. The development comes from Australia's Torus Games, notable for having a frankly enormous roster of licensed games under its belt. Although it'd be kind of funny to imagine Starbreeze devs suddenly getting way into making a Fortnite Island while Payday 3 smoulders away in the background, it's just the publishing arm of the studio lending its "expertise" in "marketing, community management, live service operations, development funding… data management and analytics," as well as, uh, "release management." Hm.
So this whole partnership could probably be better timed, or at least not lead off with messaging about Starbreeze's "expertise in release management" in the wake of one of the year's more notably disastrous releases, but hey, hindsight is 20/20, and I imagine the folks at Torus wouldn't want to delay releasing their work just because their publishing partner happened to light itself on fire at an inopportune moment.
If you're curious about Turtle vs Turtle, and I wouldn't blame you, it can be found over in Fortnite today under Starbreeze's banner. From the sounds of it, this won't be Starbreeze's last foray into the game. Starbreeze's head of third-party publishing Gustav Nisser said in a statement that Torus is "the perfect partner for us to explore the world of [Unreal Editor for Fortnite] that Epic is evolving." Torus CEO Bill McIntosh, meanwhile, said that "Starbreeze has been pivotal in bringing our vision to life. With their backing, we've crafted a unique island that we believe players will love."