Heisters rejoice! Almost a year after receiving the news about stopping further content development that crushed over 20 million heisters the CEO of Starbreeze has spoken out. As of November 5^th 2019 the Payday 2 development has been officially resumed! Here we will tell you about the journey that was the development of Payday 2 and what ultimately led to the stop and then revival of its development.

How the Payday 2 game began

Payday 2 game is a cooperative first-person shooter developed by Overkill Software and published by Starbreeze Studios. In it the player takes the role of one of 21 available characters and performs different types of heists. The heists include, but are not limited to, bank robberies, producing and distributing narcotics, and train heists. It is the direct sequel of Payday: The Heist. It broke Overkill’s records by being profitable from preorders alone and received very positive reviews all around.

What it achieved

Over the next five years Payday 2 grew, both in content and playerbase. Overkill kept releasing free and paid DLC for the game in the shape of new heists, weapons and characters. Many of those featured some brilliant collaborations with content creators, other games, and famous actors.

Fan-favorite Goat Simulator game received its own heist in the Payday 2 game. This time, instead of securing bags of cash, you were securing runaway goats scattered all over the city. Some of which even managed to get up on the very high streetlamp or got stuck in the ceiling fan. To celebrate the release of John Wick: Chapter Two, Overkill collaborated with Lionsgate for the third time. That collaboration brought us the John Wick heist pack, featuring two amazing heists.

Payday 2 is well known for its unique playable characters, and it kept delivering more great options. One of those being the collaboration with h3h3 Productions where both Ethan and Hila are featured as playable characters. Then, of course, there is the Biker character pack, which introduced none other than Ron Perlman as a playable character and voice actor for the next heister.

The Payday 2 game retirement

In December of 2018 Overkill had a sad announcement. The development of Payday 2 was to be stopped. The management stated that the reason for that was the need to focus on another projects in development. Shortly after that there were news about Starbreeze (the owner of Overkill) entering a company reconstruction. It was also assumed that the interest in Payday 2 would drop over time and after many years of development, especially as new games were released. At that time that Payday 2: Ultimate Edition was released. It served as a cheaper way to buy a bundle of many DLCs for new players.

Payday 2 game celebrated its sixth birthday not two months ago, and although not being actively worked on, the developers still found the time to thank the community and release some of the statistics about the game. It was then shown that, contrary to popular belief, the interest in Payday 2 was still very strong.

Payday 2 development resumed

On October 25^th 2019. Mikael, the new CEO of Starbreeze spoke out and brought us the good news. He explained that the company had undergone somewhat of a purgatory fire in the past year. With that, he also announced some of the changes that would be brought to Payday 2 in the future.

Most importantly, new free and paid DLCs for the game will be made again. The players can expect a steady mix of one and the other in the future. The first batch of which will be the, now released, Border Crossing heist, tailor pack, and the Cartel mod pack. The heist and the mod pack are pretty much self-explanatory, but the tailor pack is something new. With the latest update Payday 2 introduced the outfits system. The outfits system is a new cosmetic system which allows the players to select the clothes that their character wears. Up until now the player was only able to choose their mask, as their outfit was pre-determined by the type of armour they wore. As an additional treat, six free outfits were made available to all players. Now you can look even better while narrowly escaping some serious jail-time.

The latest update also brought a user interface overhaul. The general user interface and menu have been given an overhaul to make them more streamlined. The goal was to make it more efficient and easier to navigate. I, for one, think it looks better than ever. Mission accomplished. Alongside the update, Overkilled also added a new community safe to the game. The new safe is filled with sixteen of the top weapon skins from the community workshop. New safe means even more customization available for your loadout. The latest update also brought many bug fixes, making the game more stable than ever.

There is no better time to get back to the game than now! And if you still haven’t tried it, there is no time like the present! You can get your copy right HERE at 2game.

Until next time, and I’ll see you in the vault!