PAYDAY 2 is the four-player co-op heist shooter from Overkill Software. You put on the masks of Dallas, Hoxton, Wolf and Chains, the original PAYDAY crew, as they set up shop in Washington DC. Pick a contract and case the place. Then decide whether the score goes down in silence or in a storm of gunfire, split the take and go again for something bigger.
Take a Contract on CRIMENET
CRIMENET is the crew's job board, a database of contracts that keeps changing as you play. The work runs from small-time convenience store hits and kidnappings to big league cyber-crime and emptying out major bank vaults. As the crew's reputation grows, the jobs get bigger, better and more rewarding. Every contract comes from a local contact with an agenda of their own:
- Vlad the Ukrainian
- Vlad is a cheerful gangster with a taste for chaos. He sends crews after convenience stores, nightclubs and shopping malls, usually because a rival needs to learn a lesson, and he pays well for a job done loudly.
- The Elephant
- The Elephant is a shady politician with plenty to protect. He hires the crew for the kind of political errands Washington runs on, like framing his rivals and nudging an election his way.
- Hector
- Hector is a South American drug trafficker fighting a cartel war far from home. Working for him means guarding and moving shipments of cocaine, cooking meth against the clock and hitting the competition where it hurts.
Play It Your Way
Every job allows more than one approach. A stealth run means scouting the location, slipping past cameras, answering the pagers of guards you have dropped and zip tying any civilian who wanders into view. Going loud means drills, hostages and wave after wave of police assault. That starts with SWAT teams and escalates to Shields, Tasers, Cloakers and the heavily armored Bulldozers who come through the door when things get serious.
No heist plays out quite the same way twice. Layouts shift, loot and objectives move, and rare events can upend a plan you thought you knew by heart. Adjustable difficulty turns a job that teaches you the basics into a brutal test of coordination at the top end. Up to four friends can run a contract together, or you can go in solo with AI crewmates covering your back.
Build Your Heister
As you level up, you earn skill points to spend across five Skill Trees, each with its own abilities and equipment. You can mix and match them freely, so a crew can cover every role or go all in on one style:
- Mastermind: the crew's support specialist. Mastermind keeps teammates on their feet with doctor bags, keeps hostages and civilians in line, and can even turn a surrendered cop into an ally for the rest of the job.
- Enforcer: the frontline heavy. Enforcer is built to soak up punishment in heavy armor, clear rooms with shotguns and keep everyone supplied with ammo bags when an assault drags on.
- Technician: the crew's engineer. Technician lays trip mines, deploys sentry guns and gets drills and shaped charges through doors and safes faster.
- Ghost: the stealth specialist. Ghost moves quietly, jams electronics with ECM devices and dodges incoming fire when a quiet plan turns loud.
- Fugitive: the survivor. Fugitive is built around pistols and close-quarters fighting, and specializes in staying in the fight long after health runs low.
Masks, Guns and Mods
Your mask is your signature. You craft it from a pattern and color of your choice, and the combinations run into the millions. The arsenal is built for serious heisters, covering everything from sniper and assault rifles to compact PDWs and SMGs. Once you have a favorite, you can fit optics, suppressors, fore grips, reticles, barrels, frames and stocks, and each part changes how the weapon handles. There are also purely cosmetic touches, so polished walnut grips on your nine are fair game.
A Heist That Never Ended
PAYDAY 2 launched in August 2013 and has been updated ever since. Updates have added new heists, characters, weapons and mechanics like driving cars and forklifts. In October 2025 Starbreeze partnered with Sidetrack Games, a studio that grew out of the game's own modding community, to keep the game supported with fixes and quality-of-life updates. An upgraded version of the Diesel engine went live in August 2026. The co-op community is still busy, with tens of thousands of players pulling jobs at the same time. Owners can also add a free VR mode and run heists from inside a headset.
Get three friends together, pick your mask and choose your first contract. The van is waiting, and Washington's vaults are not going to empty themselves.
