Next Payday may include versus mode, let players control police

Overkill Software's next Payday title may let players control the police in versus mode — a feature that was initially left out of the recently-released Payday 2 so the developer could focus on a co-op experience, director David Goldfarb told Rock Paper Shotgun.

According to Goldfarb, the development team had previously discussed the option, and will likely continue to mull the idea for the next title. He also suggested that getting Payday 2 out on time meant sticking to its core focus of co-op play.

"The one thing, without going into too much detail, is we made a lot of decisions on this game that were ambitious and risky, and one of the reasons that we were able to get it out on time and make it generally a good game is that we didn't entertain a lot of stuff that was outside of our core focus, and the core focus is not versus," Goldfarb explained. "The core focus is co-op."

He added that for the next game "maybe" the focus will change to a more competitive experience.

"When you make a versus game it puts you in a different place, and then your attention is kind of split," Goldfarb said. "And having been on the Battlefield side of things, and we're doing [single player] and co-op, and multiplayer and they all kind of suffer in their own ways.

"It was good that we kept our focus and enabled us to finish this game," he added. "Now I'm not going say we would never consider it, but that's what we did on this one."