Payday 2 sales help Starbreeze offset rising costs

Starbreeze brought  8 million new players into the Payday 2 community by giving the popular heist title away for free. 

Earlier this year the company, which owns Payday 2 developer Overkill, celebrated the release of the Payday 2: Ultimate Edition by attempting to give 5 million copies of the base game away for free.

The promotion was met with a hugely positive response, and Starbreeze managed to shift every single copy in under 36 hours -- paving the way for those new owners to splash out on DLC. 

After extending the campaign, Starbreeze wound up attracting almost 8 million new players in less that five days, and saw Payday 2 reach a new all-time peak of 247,628 concurrent players on Steam.

While that's a notable achievement in itself, the firm's latest financial report shows the move paid off in more ways than one. 

Despite the fact that the game launched in August 2013, Payday 2 sales were up by SEK 8.3 million ($1.03 million) year-over-year. 

All in all, the co-op shooter generated SEK 74.6 million ($9.25 million) of Starbreeze's total sales revenue during the first half of the financial year, driving net sales up by 26 percent to SEK 180 million ($22.3 million). 

Although sales were up, rising costs in Starbreeze's core business along with some sizable acquisitions meant the company posted a minor loss of SEK 2.7 million ($335,128).

That hit didn't come as a shock though, and Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson Klint explained the firm may experience further losses until major titles like Overkill's The Walking Dead and Crossfire hit shelves.