There’s rocky development timelines, and then there’s? whatever the heck you would classify Payday: Crime War’s development hell as. This built-for-mobile entry in the popular Payday heist game series was originally announced during E3 way back in June of 2015. It would be an entire year before we heard any further news on Crime War, when it was announced during 2016’s E3 that the game wouldn’t be a cooperative-focused heisting game like its PC and console siblings, but rather a 4v4 first-person shooter where teams of heisters would take on teams of police, with various Payday-like “heist" gameplay elements peppered throughout. It actually sounded really cool, but it would be nearly another whole year before we got our actual first look at Payday: Crime War in action with a gameplay trailer and word that the game would be “out soon." Now fast-forward a year and four months to September of 2018, and Payday: Crime War was entering closed beta. It was finally getting close, for reals this time! Or so it seemed. The last we heard from the game was a little over a year later in November of 2019 when the developers officially announced that the soft-launched version of Payday: Crime War would be shut down, with the hopes that it might come back to life someday with a new publisher.

Well, somehow and someway that seems to be actually happening as this week Payday’s parent company Starbreeze announced that they̵...