Overkill Software is a Swedish video game developer based and founded in Stockholm in 2009 by Ulf Andersson, Bo Andersson, the founders and owners of defunct game developer Grin, along with Simon Viklund. In 2012, Swedish game studio Starbreeze Studios acquired Overkill. The company is known for their Payday series, consisting of Payday: The Heist, Payday 2, and Payday 3.
History
Brothers Bo and Ulf Andersson had founded Grin in 1997, which had some successful titles including Bionic Commando. However, when a deal with Square Enix to make a Final Fantasy-based game fell through, Grin went bankrupt and was shut down in 2009. The Anderssons launched Overkill Software that same year after Grin gets shut down due to bankruptcy, with their first project being Payday: The Heist, released in 2011. Payday was a success for PC and PlayStation 3.
Overkill desired to make a sequel to Payday, but did not have extensive financial resources to complete this project. They worked a deal with another Swedish studio, Starbreeze Studios, which at the same time was running low on cash while trying to develop Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. While officially, Overkill was acquired by Starbreeze on 19 April 2012, those familiar with the deal, speaking to Eurogamer stated that this was more akin to Overkill's investors, including the Andersson's Varvtre AB group, becoming the majority shareholders of Starbreeze, and the few staff and assets left with Starbreeze were incorporated into Overkill's Stockholm offices. The net result gave Overkill the necessary funding to complete Payday 2, which was released in 2013, along with Starbreeze's Brothers, with publishing support from 505 Games. Ultimately, 505 Games sold its part of the Payday intellectual property ownership back to Starbreeze on 30 May 2016, leaving Starbreeze and Overkill full ownership of the franchise. By 2013, Bo Andersson was named CEO of Starbreeze while still overseeing Overkill's operations.
Following the release of Payday 2, Bo and Ulf had a falling out. Ulf Andersson, the chief creative director on Payday 2, reportedly had been burned out by its development, and had not shown up to work for several months, according to those close to Overkill. Bo bought out Ulf's shares of Varvtre AB, and Ulf officially announced his departure from Overkill on 4 May 2015 for unstated reasons, though remained a consultant for Overkill for the next two years. Ulf Andersson went on to form the 10 Chambers Collective, which is working on GTFO, a science fiction game that borrows from some of Paydays concepts. The two studios do now occasionally collaborate in promotional material.