Starbreeze provided a brief but significant update on PAYDAY 3 a few hours ago, straight from the official Twitter account of the franchise. There's the first image, for starters, albeit it is admittedly quite dark and cryptic.

　　Additionally, the tweet confirms that PAYDAY 3 is currently in the 'design phase' and will use Unreal Engine technology, thus officially abandoning the Diesel Engine that the previous installments were based on.

　　PAYDAY 3 is the main project Starbreeze is working on right now, following the massive financial upheaval suffered by the company in recent years, which forced Starbreeze to sell some of its assets.

　　The latest financial report from June indicated that proper PAYDAY 3 development began in October 2019, about a year ago, featuring a core team of around 45 developers. The key goal will be to expand the already huge PAYDAY community (over 28 million users between the first and the second game) by adding new functionalities and game modes; the game is also going to be released simultaneously on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, unlike PAYDAY 2 which shipped on PC first. The Unreal Engine technology will surely help with that.

　　The estimated release date for PAYDAY 3 is still 2022 or 2023, just like last year's internal prediction, though the latter option seems more likely than the former considering the project is still in the design phase.