Payday’s Starbreeze Studios Teases D&D Co-op Multiplayer Game ‘Project Baxter’

Payday developer Starbreeze Studios is moving away from high-powered rifles and bank heists and into Dungeons & Dragons territory. The studio’s latest financial report, reveals ongoing work on a AAA co-op multiplayer game inspired by the popular tabletop RPG, codenamed Project Baxter, and plans to scale up its dev team.

Starbreeze describes the project as “a completely new environment compared to PAYDAY but with the DNA that Starbreeze has excelled in over the past decade; […] co-operative multiplayer, lifetime commitment through a games as a service-model, community engagement and a larger than life experience.”

“It is hard to imagine a better pairing than Dungeons & Dragons and Starbreeze—both with their foundation in cooperative and community driven experiences, 'play it your way' and infinite replayability,” said Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren. When looking at prospective IPs for our future projects, Dungeons & Dragons was always at the top of our list and I'm incredibly happy to announce this license.”

I can probably imagine several other better pairings, but in some ways, Payday is actually a lot like D&D. You form crews to steal, or more appropriately, loot valuable items from heavily guarded locations, with a big angry manager waiting at the end who holds the key to a vault, or maybe a chest, of treasure.

In any case, we’ve got a long wait ahead of us as Project Baxter won’t be coming out until 2026 if it isn’t delayed further like every other game launch over the past few years.