They have been circling the drain for a long time now. With this cancelation I think they're done. They can't live off Payday 2 forever.

As a fan of PAYDAY, I can confirm, they almost always make the worst decisions possible.

It's both funny and sad how they sort of threw around money when they were swimming in it, such as the acquiring of the Valhalla engine, which turned out to only consist of the rendering part of the engine during the buyout, yet at the same time don't seem to be brave enough to try to make something else than Payday 2. Overkill's The Walking Dead was basically a Payday 2 clone, and Payday 3 is the official successor to it, making both fall under the shadow of its still running cash cow. Even their cooperation with Lion Game Lion to make a spiritual successor/spinoff with Raid:WW2 seems harebrained, as it would immediately draw comparisons to PD2, which it could never really overcome.

Honestly, it's odd how they just didn't make Payday 3 a straightforward port of Payday 2 into the Unreal engine and have a smaller side project to keep the creative juices flowing as the player base slowly switches to the new engine.