Following the success of PAYDAY: The Heist, Starbreeze (makers of the Riddick games) decided to buy the previous developer and fund a sequel. A playable beta was released on July 24th, 2013 for players who pre-ordered the Steam version of the game. The game proper was released worldwide in 2013, on August 13th for Windows via Steam, August 16th for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with Linux getting a port on March 21st, 2016. In June 2015, the "Crimewave Edition" was released for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, including all DLC content from the Steam version up to the Dragan character pack and the Bomb Heists, with a "Big Score" edition coming later on September 7th, 2016, including the rest of the DLC up to the end of 2015, a "Most Wanted" edition releasing in 2017, containing all of the DLC released up to July 2016, and a "Master Plan" edition released later in 2017 including content up to May of that year.
The game follows the same crew of hardened criminals — Dallas, Chains, Wolf, and Hoxton — who have moved on to bigger and better heists in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area. This wasn't the case initially, due to a complicated situation involving the original voice actors being replaced. After fan outcry, the voice actors returned, save for Chains (who remained the same character in-story) and Hoxton (who was replaced in-story by Dallas's brother). Eventually, the original Hoxton was brought back to the fold through a prison break, and his replacement was renamed "Houston" to avoid confusion.
Like its predecessor, PAYDAY 2 involves hitting a target for huge cash bonuses, and carries a lot of similarities: guys in clown masks, tropes and ideas borrowed from heist movies, and core mechanics that mirror the Left 4 Dead series. Rather than having swappable classes, the game uses a more refined character class system; you spend skill points to level up different class trees that contain different abilities, allowing you to mix-and-match abilities. Supplementing class skills are perk decks that grant passive abilities (including four perks shared across every deck, like slightly higher headshot damage, and slightly faster movement while wearing armor, and five unique perks for each deck, like health bonuses for having hostages, regaining some health by killing enemies, moving faster, and having faster armor regen at lower health, etc.) that are applied to the player and sometimes the rest of the crew. The game also contains weapon mods that allow players to tweak and customize weapons as they wish for optimal performance, as well as customizable masks that have different materials, patterns, and colors.
In addition to the game, Overkill Software created a promotional mini-series, simply called PAYDAY: The Web Series, which consists of six episodes (averaging at about 10 minutes each) based on the game. The series showcases the main characters in action while also showing minor characters that play a role in the overall story arc, or what kind of people they are. The series was produced and directed by Demian Lichtenstein, who also directed 3000 Miles to Graceland, and was co-produced by Overkill Software. The series can be found for free on Youtube as well as several other websites.
The game had five DLCs planned, until Overkill's publisher 505 Games gave several million dollars in funding to ensure content and support for the game for the next 20 months. The successful beta test from the community had the developers release the first DLC, Armored Transport Heist, for free towards anyone who pre-ordered the game. The game is also receiving continued updates every few weeks, which as of Ultimate Edition, includes free content and bug fixes.
Especially of note is that, as a thank you to the community, free bonuses were released for the series' third anniversary: dubbed CrimeFest
, the content is available to everyone enlisted in the official Steam group, with each reward given for passing member milestones before the anniversary. As reward for getting over 1.5 million members five days early, several major upgrades were released (some still ongoing). Furthermore, on October 25, it was announced that Overkill would be partnering up with their friends at Lion Game Lion, an independent studio that branched off from their company, to produce another series of new heists.
Like its predecessor, the soundtrack can be found on Steam as downloadable albums of the game OST and the GO Bank Christmas singles. Almost all of the music can be heard via the in-game jukebox for free (provided you own the core game), and several can be heard for free on the PAYDAY Bandcamp page and composer Simon Viklund's site.
2017 was a big year for the game - in April, it was announced the game would be getting ported to the Nintendo Switch, with the port releasing in February 2018. It was also announced the following month that the PC version of the game would be rebundled into the "Ultimate Edition", removing the need to separately buy its overwhelming amounts of DLC; said edition retails for $45, far less than the normal cost of all the DLC combined, with the bonus that anyone who already owned the base game and any amount of DLC can simply upgrade to the Ultimate Edition for a much-reduced price, close to the equivalent of the typical 75%-off sale for whatever DLC they don't own. On top of that, Overkill later revealed that the PC version would be getting support for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, bringing the entire game to VR and allowing for cross-platform play with non-VR players.
And finally, between December 2017 and November 2018, the game would see its seemingly final year of content updates spread across four events, which tell a new story arc revolving around an Illuminati-esque secret society known as the Kataru. OVERKILL had stated that they still planned on continuing to support the game until some point in 2019, but it was unclear what this entailed and when exactly support would end, especially with the issues surrounding Starbreeze at the time and the disaster their Walking Dead entry had created.
In October 2019, however, OVERKILL released a statement that confirmed that the game would continue full development. Alongside it was the announcement that DLC would be available individually again, and the Ultimate Edition being replaced by the Legacy Collection. As for new content, OVERKILL willingly noted that they were breaking the free content rule they had instated by adding new paid DLC, but had also stated that free content updates would continue as well.
In March 2021 it was announced that Starbreeze and OVERKILL are now working on PAYDAY 3, using Unreal Engine 4 (and set to upgrade to Unreal 5 in the future), set to be released on September 23rd, 2023 on all major consoles, with cross-play and cross-progression supported. Set in modern day New York instead of Washington DC, Dallas, Chains, Hoxton, and Wolf all return with updated designs. It is confirmed to take place a few years after the events of PAYDAY 2 seeing the four come out of their early retirement to deal with a new threat.
