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Payday 2 lead leaves Overkill to create new studio
Payday 2 director David Goldfarb has left the game's developer, Overkill, a studio owned by Starbreeze. Goldfarb told Polygon that he plans to found his own studio in Stockholm, saying, "I knew that at some point the thing that I always wanted was to make my own thing." The move comes almost two years after he joined Overkill, before which he had worked at DICE on projects including Battlefield 3 and Joystiq's beloved Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The incipient studio already has a few developers in place, and Goldfarb has an idea of what he'd like to make – and what he doesn't want to make. "No MOBAs, no comic book styled art, no pixel art," he said, though he added that those are all perfectly valid choices. "I love role-playing games so I will probably make one." Here's hoping it's not an RPG about guys in creepy clown masks robbing banks. [Image: @locust9]
Overkill adding 5 DLC packs to Payday 2, would 'love' to add mods
Overkill Software producer Almir Listo recently said the studio has "a year of DLC planned" for Payday 2, its multiplayer heist game that launched this week on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 (August 23 for Xbox Games on Demand). Listo tells Joystiq that five DLC packs in total are in the works. "Payday 2 - just like its predecessor Payday: The Heist - is a living thing. We have 5 DLCs planned together with 505 Games for the coming year." Listo went on to say that Overkill would continue to update the game with both paid and free content, "just like we did with the first game." In Payday 2, the same maps are recycled over many different types of jobs, suggesting a natural fit for modding support or Steamworks integration. "We would love to add support for creating community generated content," Listo said, but in the meantime the team will "continue to look into this." Listo posted a message on Steam yesterday about absent safe house customization options and Cloakers, special heavy-duty police units seen in the beta. Both will be added down the line: "The safe house is what we intended it to be at release," Listo said. "Just like Bain says when you enter the safe house for the first time, it's not much at the moment, but give it some time. He's working on it and he'll let us do some decorating soon." Finally, Listo addressed the idea of further franchise crossovers. The first Payday had a mission set in the No Mercy map of Left 4 Dead, serving as a non-canon prequel to Valve's co-op zombie shooting gallery. On this point Listo said, "We can't discuss if we have any crossovers planned right now, but we will let you know when/if that should change."
Ex-Battlefield lead David Goldfarb now at Starbreeze, working on Payday sequel
Last month, we heard that Battlefield 3 lead designer David Goldfarb exited EA's Sweden-based DICE studio. It seems that Goldfarb is staying in the country, as he's accepted a job at Starbreeze-owned developer Overkill Software. Goldfarb announced as much on Twitter, donning the above Payday: The Heist mask and scaring children worldwide.Goldfarb is set to work alongside studio lead Ulf Andersson on a sequel to Payday, as well as an unannounced title Overkill is working on. "I've worked on these huge games, and that was great, but I really wanted to work on smaller, tighter, and more intimate projects that are more gameplay driven, and I saw the opportunity to do that here," Goldfarb told Develop. Andersson added, "I'm really looking forward to this to see if we can make something really cool together."
Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2 lead designer David Goldfarb exits DICE
Having worked on mostly Battlefield games for the past five years, the man who lead design on both Battlefield 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, David Goldfarb, has left EA's DICE studio. "5 years, 4 games. Grateful to have worked with such awesome people on awesome games. Farewell + Onward," he tweeted yesterday afternoon.Goldfarb told Joystiq of his exit, "I was ready to move onto new things and do something different." He wouldn't tell us where he's headed next.Goldfarb's not the first high profile DICE dev to leave the company in the past few years. Gordon Van Dyke left back in 2010; he's now with Paradox Interactive working on a Battlefield-flavored third-person action game from developer FatShark, War of the Roses. The other third of Battlefield's recent dev leadership, Patrick Bach, is currently serving as company CEO while Karl Magnus Troedsson takes paternity leave.Beyond various DLC plans for Battlefield 3, it's unknown what DICE is currently working on. The studio's Frostbite 2.0 game engine is used in several EA properties (including the other first-person shooter from EA, Medal of Honor: Warfighter), and the only other game it has made outside of Battlefield in recent years is Mirror's Edge. Troedsson told us during GDC that DICE has "ongoing plans" to differentiate its game portfolio, but we've yet to see that promise play out. EA Studios president Frank Gibeau has repeatedly noted his interest in a sequel to ME, but we've yet to hear anything more official than that.EA reps didn't respond to request for comment regarding Goldfarb's exit as of publishing.[Image credit: 'jontintinjordan']
