Powered by LootLocker: How a Trusted Backend Partnership Is Helping Fast Travel Games Heist Their Way to the Top of VR

Who

Fast Travel Games is a VR-exclusive game developer and publisher based in Stockholm, Sweden. Founded in 2016 by industry veterans with roots at DICE, Rovio, and Avalanche Studios, the studio has built one of the most consistent and critically respected catalogues in VR, spanning original titles like Apex Construct, Mannequin, and Action Hero, through to published titles from partner developers across the VR ecosystem.

Their latest title, PAYDAY: Aces High, is an officially licensed VR co-op heist game developed in partnership with Starbreeze Entertainment, and is launching in 2026 on Meta Quest and SteamVR. It marks one of the most ambitious VR productions the studio has undertaken and one of the most high-profile entries in the PAYDAY franchise, which has engaged more than 50 million players and generated over $400 million in lifetime revenue.

Features Used

• Player Authentication (Docs)
• Progressions (Docs)
• Assets (Docs)
• Economy (Docs)
• Classes (Docs)
• Broadcasts (Docs)
• Feedback (Docs)

The Story

For fifteen years, the PAYDAY franchise has let players live out the fantasy of the perfectly executed heist. The franchise's blend of tactical co-op planning and explosive, mask-on chaos has made it one of gaming's most beloved multiplayer properties — and one of the most commercially successful, with a community of tens of millions and hundreds of millions in revenue to show for it.

PAYDAY began in Stockholm. And it will return to VR from Stockholm, too.

Fast Travel Games was founded in 2016 by veterans who had spent their careers at some of the industry's most respected studios. CEO Oskar Burman has held senior roles at EA and Avalanche Studios, and served as General Manager at Rovio. CTO and co-founder Kristoffer Benjaminsson came from DICE & Frostbite, where he worked on the Battlefield series. Creative Director and co-founder Erik Odeldahl, also from DICE, worked on Mirror's Edge. Together, they built Fast Travel into the kind of studio that VR players have come to depend on; one that ships polished, ambitious experiences with the consistency of a major developer.

When Starbreeze Entertainment went looking for the ideal partner to bring PAYDAY into virtual reality, they didn't have to look far. The collaboration is a meeting of Stockholm institutions: an iconic franchise and a studio that has spent a decade proving VR can deliver AAA-quality experiences.

PAYDAY: Aces High puts players in the masks of The Aces — four elite heisters framed by business titan Warren Jupiter and now hitting back where it hurts: banks, museums, and a luxury penthouse that Warren Jupiter considers untouchable. The game is built from the ground up for VR, supporting up to four players in co-op, and bringing the full PAYDAY toolkit to an immersive format: character classes, deepening progression, a growing arsenal of weapons and gadgets, and a rich in-game economy for unlocking skills and cosmetics.

Delivering all of that required more from the backend than most VR games ever demand. Fast Travel Games knew exactly where to turn.

"We'd worked with LootLocker on Apex Construct and Action Hero, so when we started building Aces High, the decision to use LootLocker again was an easy decision to make. We already knew the platform, we already trusted it, and we already knew it could scale with whatever we threw at it. What surprised us this time was just how much further we were able to push it."

Kristoffer Benjaminsson, CTO and Co-founder, Fast Travel Games

That trust mattered from the start. PAYDAY: Aces High is, by VR standards, a large team production, but even so, Fast Travel had only one dedicated backend developer and no DevOps resource. LootLocker's managed, auto-scaling infrastructure meant they never needed one. The team could pour their energy into making the game rather than managing the systems underneath it.

That energy went far. Aces High features over 200 pieces of unlockable content: weapons, cosmetics, gear, gadgets. Managing that catalog through LootLocker's asset and equipable context systems means designers can work directly in the platform, adjusting values, tweaking unlock conditions, and iterating on the economy without pulling engineers away from the game itself.

"One of the things I really appreciate and value with LootLocker is the admin API allowing us to integrate LootLocker into our existing workflows inside Unreal. It means we can iterate and tweak values in the editor during development and bulk export to LootLocker when we’re happy. Reducing context switches and the ability to automate help speed up the development process"

Kristoffer Benjaminsson, CTO and Co-founder, Fast Travel Games

The game's four character classes: the Mastermind, the Ghost, the Technician, and the Enforcer, each carry distinct playstyles and skill trees, built out through LootLocker's Classes system. LootLocker's Progression system handles players' advancement through each heist and across the broader meta layer, while the Economy system powers the in-game store where players spend hard-earned currency on the gear and upgrades that define their approach to the job. Every unlock, every purchase, every item equipped: all stored, secured, and managed through LootLocker, without a single line of bespoke backend code required.

LootLocker's Broadcasts system, meanwhile, gives the team a channel for time-limited messages and in-game communications, exactly the kind of live-service tooling a game like Aces High needs to communicate information to its community post-launch. And when players are flagged for cheating or abuse, the Reports and Feedback systems give the team a structured way to receive, review, and act on that input without it swallowing engineering bandwidth.

VR also presents a platform challenge that most developers don't face. PAYDAY: Aces High is targeting Meta Quest and SteamVR at launch, with additional platforms potentially to follow. LootLocker's native support for the major VR storefronts and its track record of adding new platform support regularly and upon request meant Fast Travel could build confidently for the platforms they needed today, without foreclosing their options for tomorrow.

"VR is still a platform landscape in motion. New hardware arrives, new storefronts emerge, and where your players are today might not be where they are in two years. Knowing that LootLocker supports the platforms we're on and adds new ones as the market evolves means we can make backend decisions once and focus on the game, rather than revisiting those decisions every time the hardware picture shifts."

Kristoffer Benjaminsson, CTO and Co-founder, Fast Travel Games

There is a bigger picture here, too. One that goes beyond any single title.

With a growing catalogue that now stretches across ten titles representing a meaningful community of VR players, and LootLocker's cross-game integration capabilities give Fast Travel the foundation to potentially connect those players across titles: enabling cross-game promotions, shared account infrastructure, and the kind of catalog-level relationship with their audience that only the largest traditional publishers have historically been able to build.

"We think about our catalog the way a publisher should - as a platform, not a list of separate releases. LootLocker gives us the infrastructure to allow us to make that real: players who feel at home across our titles, promotions that bridge games, and an account layer that grows with us as we grow. That's a long game, and it starts with building on something you trust."

Kristoffer Benjaminsson, CTO and Co-founder, Fast Travel Games

For now, the immediate task is bringing the definitive PAYDAY experience to VR and with Aces High, Fast Travel Games looks set to deliver exactly that. LootLocker will be there when the masks go on.

PAYDAY: Aces High is coming to Meta Quest and SteamVR in 2026. Wishlist it now on Steam and the Meta Store.