Payday 2 On Nintendo Switch Will Not Be The Current Version Of The Game

[thunderball]

The cooperative heist game, Payday 2, is set to launch on the Nintendo Switch next Tuesday, Feb. 27. Up until now, though, there has been some confusion as to how up-to-date that version of the game will be. According to a recent update from the developers at Starbreeze, the answer is, "about a year old."

With Payday 2 set to launch next week, someone got their hands on an early copy of the game and has started posting videos. In those videos, players from other platforms noticed certain features missing from the game, features that were added throughout 2017. This caused quite an uproar, with reddit posts popping up discouraging folks from buying the game because it's outdated.

There's a lot of static out there, so thankfully Polygon managed to get a line directly to Starbreeze, who filled in the gaps. According to their statement, the Switch game is slightly behind the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game, which are themselves slightly behind the PC version. Apparently that all has to do with development timing.

The reasoning for the Switch content: we're making continuous updates to a game that's turning 5 years old this year, and to get the game out in early 2018 on Switch meant that our team had to go with the content ported and available at the time of console submission.

In other words, the Switch version of Payday 2, according to Starbreeze, is on par with the other console versions from June 2017. Those other versions received another update in late 2017, which is not currently included in the Switch version of the game. And again, those other console versions are still an update behind PC.

The statement goes on to say that the Switch version of Payday 2 will receive updates to address the disparity, though folks on message boards don't seem to be convinced.

Call me naïve, but I tend to trust Starbreeze on this one. Of course, I haven't been playing Payday 2 for the past five years, so maybe there's a reason folks are so skeptical at the moment. But their reasoning certainly seems to make sense. If they started working on a Switch version of Payday 2 last year and were gunning for an early 2018 launch, it stands to reason that the game might be missing content added to other versions of the game just a couple of months ago. It also stands to reason that Starbreeze would already be working on an update to bring the Switch version of the game on par with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which are apparently only one update in the lead.

If nothing else, I'm not sure the Switch version being an update behind other platforms is a great reason to encourage folks to "Please do not buy Payday 2 for Switch. It's a severely outdated version. Do not support the developers," as one forum title suggests, but that's up to each individual to decide.