Sidetrack Games is an independent studio that came out of the PAYDAY modding community. Before it was a company it was the M.U.G. Team, a group of prolific PAYDAY 2 modders, and its founders, Justin, Leon and Patrik, describe the journey as one from the modding trenches to a dedicated studio. Now a Dutch-registered company, Sidetrack Games B.V., it specializes in the Diesel engine, the technology behind PAYDAY 2 and RAID: World War II, and in the games built on it. Its first major project was spearheading the revival of RAID: World War II, where it oversaw engine upgrades, critical bug fixes and new content.
That work is what brought the studio to PAYDAY 2 officially. On October 21, 2025 Starbreeze announced Sidetrack as its partner on the PC version of the game, citing the studio's long-running work on RAID: World War II, with Sidetrack taking on quality-of-life improvements and general fixes so Starbreeze could keep its focus on PAYDAY 3. The first Sidetrack update shipped two days later, and the partnership has since gone well beyond maintenance: after an open beta from June 30, 2026, Update 247 moved PAYDAY 2 to version 3 of the Diesel engine in August, and the Under the Hammer Heist DLC arrived with Update 248 on September 15, 2026. PAYDAY 2 now credits Sidetrack Games as a developer alongside Overkill, a rare case of a game's own players becoming part of the team that keeps it going.
