Tobias Sjögren has been removed from his role as CEO of developer Starbreeze after the company's board of directors concluded that the studio “needs different leadership” to execute its current business strategy. The announcement follows the disastrous launch of Payday 3 last year, which is still struggling to attract players in significant numbers.
Starbreeze's board of directors announced Sjögren's dismissal in a note to investorsadding that Juergen Goeldner, a board member and former CEO of Focus Home Interactive, would serve as interim CEO while the hiring process for a permanent replacement gets underway.
“The company has a clear strategy focused on creating compelling first-party and licensed IP games,” Starbreeze President Torgny Hellström said of today's management changes. “The board's consolidated assessment is that the execution of the strategy needs different leadership. Juergen Goeldner has been on the board since 2023 and, with more than 40 years of experience in the sector, is a solid interim solution.”
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Sjögren became Starbreeze's interim CEO in 2020, overseeing the studio's continued revitalization following severe financial problems and its near-collapse, before becoming permanent CEO in 2021. Starbreeze has since focused on Payday 3 as its next big revenue driver, but a disastrous launch. last year failed to draw players away from Payday 2.
In February of this year, Starbreeze admitted that Payday 3 player activity was “currently at significantly lower levels than [it] would like to,” but said he had plans to “ensure the game lives up to expectations.” However, the game's fortunes have yet to improve; Payday 3's concurrent player count is 287 on Steam versus 29,167 from Payday 2 at the time of writing this article.
In a statement announcing his appointment as Starbreeze's new interim CEO, Juergen Goeldner said: “After launching Payday 3, the company is well positioned to leverage the organization's strengths to monetize and develop the intellectual property portfolio.” Starbreeze is currently working on a Dungeons and Dragons game, expected to release in 2026.
