By many accounts, Payday 3 appears to be a disappointing half-step forward for the longrunning co-op bank robbery series. Unlike its predecessor, it also requires players to always be online, a seemingly grave misjudgement given Payday 3’s first-week launch woes. The problems with crashes, slow matchmaking, and disconnected servers were so bad the CEO of creator Starbreeze Studios began apologizing for the state of the game almost immediately.

“We are so sorry that the infrastructure didn’t hold up as expected, and although it’s impossible to prepare for every scenario—we should be able to do better,” Tobias Sjögren tweeted on September 22, just a day after Payday 3’s debut. “We work tirelessly until we have restored all services and our players can get back to heisting again without issues!”

“Early access” for Payday 3 began on September 18, but the massive influx of new players didn’t begin until its full release on September 21. In addition to PC and PlayStation 5, the multiplayer heist sim also hit Game Pass, where paying subscribers on Xbox Series X/S could download it for free. PC players complained about the game being stuck in “searching” mode when trying to find a match. Some Xbox players also appear to have faced unstable servers and crashes.

“No matter what you choose, public, friends only, invite only, it will just matchmaker forever,” wrote one player in a post that blew up on Reddit. “Release day is usually tough for studios. This…This is embarrassing.”

Players on PS5, meanwhile, began the week with an apparent wrong build of the game. Lead producer Andreas Häll-Penninger blamed Sony for pushing out an incorrect patch. “PS5 players: For reasons out of our control you are currently playing an older version of the game,” he tweeted. “Sony is working on rolling out the proper patch.” The right version arrived a day later, but it was still a bad omen for fans on PS5 who paid $30 extra for the Silver Edition to play the game before others.

Naturally, the outages have once again spurred calls for companies to move away from always-online requirements. Payday 2’s offline mode lets players run through missions with AI-controlled characters. While the allure of the series remains its real time online multiplayer antics, being able to still enjoy the game without an internet connection was a nice feature. An offline mod for the game is apparently already in the works.

A three-act play on the Payday 3 Twitter account (sorry, I mean “X” account) perfectly captured the mood of the launch. “HEISTERS! We’re number one on Steam!” the account tweeted on September 21. “Heisters, we’re currently experiencing slow matchmaking,” read its very next tweet. “We’re investigating and working on a solution.” While matchmaking was unavailable for many throughout the afternoon and evening, the studio reported that things were improving by early in the morning on September 22, only for outages to creep back in as the day went on.

The ongoing mess is another reminder of why so many people take a wait-and-see approach to new game launches, especially on PC, especially when they have stringent online requirements. “Payday 3 feels like the kind of game that is not meant for day-one purchase,” wrote one observer on Reddit. “But rather wait until they have a bunch of content released.”

This is effectively what IGN wrote in the very first paragraph of its Payday 3 review. “The usual horrible Payday bugs, a dinky pool of jobs to tackle, and a predictably weak story mean it’s not exactly the giant leap forward I was hoping for,” it reads. “Still, if Payday 2’s post-launch support is any indication, this is at least a very promising start for what could become another decade of happily pistol whipping cashiers and fixing drills.”

A promising start indeed!

I am carefully making my way through a haunting forest of crushing darkness. Wolves snarl at me as twisted beings who were once human stumble about, their aggressive muttering filling my head with fear. My heart rate is elevated; I’m completely immersed in the dark fantasy of Alan Wake II. Then, suddenly, a friendly chime shatters the moment, and as a banner unfurls onscreen to tout some accomplishment of mine, all that fear the game is working so hard to establish evaporates. This is the Epic Games Store reminding me it exists with an inescapable nightmare of an achievement notification, spoiling the beautifully woven experience that is this game. And you can’t turn it off.

Alan Wake II finally arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on October 27, 2023. If you’re playing it on PC, however, you’re limited to the Epic Games Store. Unfortunately for Alan Wake II, this choice of store and launcher actually mars the experience a bit. Like many game launchers, the Epic Games Store features an achievement system: Do a thing, earn an achievement. This feature was added to the store in 2021. But a feature that still has yet to be added is the option to turn its large, glowy, rectangular banner and obnoxious chime sound off. Sadly, it makes for an ill-fitting distraction in an otherwise beautifully lush, dark, and moody game.

If you can’t recall what the Epic Games Store notification sounds or looks like, check it out here:

Okay, maybe that’s fine for Rocket League, but just imagine this spontaneously showing up in a game like this:

Having spent a few hours in Alan Wake II on PC, I can tell you that it’s a dramatically distracting experience, made worse by the fact that you can’t take control and shut it off.

How to disable the Epic Games Store achievement notifications (you can’t)

At the time of writing, there doesn’t appear to be any official way to shut off the Epic Games Store achievement notifications. You can kill other notifications, like store sales and such in the settings, and you can flip the overlay (which is what displays this horribly distracting effect) into “Do Not Disturb” mode, but even with that, these notifications will disturb you.

If there is an official fix, we’ll be sure to update this post. But based on conversations on the internet going as far back as a few years ago, EGS’ annoying achievement notifications have been an issue for some players. Some have pointed out that firing up the Task Manager and killing the “EOSOverlayRenderer” process does the trick, but it doesn’t always seem to work (and it seems like it would kill achievements in general, which may not be totally desirable).

I’ve tried to kill the EOSOverlayRenderer a few times to see it just show back up again, achievement notifications and everything. Even if this is a killable process, it’s still far from an ideal solution.

Again, for a game like Fortnite or Rocket League, this probably isn’t a big issue. But Alan Wake II aspires to achieve a high level of visual and auditory immersion. It’s an intense, gorgeous game that demands full attention in a way that I’m loving—but those damn chimes and banners feel dramatically out of place.

The Epic Games Store’s obnoxious achievements are a serious damper on the otherwise lovely and immersive experience I’m having with Alan Wake II at the moment. When combined with its very steep PC requirements, it may be worth checking out Alan Wake II on a console if the idea doesn’t offend you. I know I wish I was playing this on my PS5 right now.