Sidetrack Games — the studio Starbreeze handed Payday 2 off to in 2025 — has revealed a major engine upgrade for the 13-year-old heist shooter. The update ports the game to 64-bit architecture, bumps rendering to DirectX 11, and slashes the install size from 86GB down to 32GB.
The 64-bit move should finally kill the out-of-memory crashes that have plagued the game for years. DirectX 11 won't make Payday 2 look any different, but it cuts VRAM usage significantly, which means better performance on lower-end hardware. The tradeoff, as Sidetrack's Leon explains in the announcement video, is mod breakage — he called it "inevitable" and urged modders to "repair what can be repaired" during the upcoming beta. The studio says it will help with new file formats where it can.
That beta kicks off June 30 and runs through the end of July, open to everyone. Full details on how to opt in will be posted on the 30th.
The elephant in the room is Payday 3. Starbreeze originally handed Payday 2 to Sidetrack so it could focus on its struggling sequel, but the newer game's recent highlights amount to PUBG and Roblox crossovers and the addition of peer-to-peer support. Meanwhile Payday 2 still dwarfs Payday 3 on Steam by player count. Starbreeze hasn't called Payday 3 dead, but the energy is clearly elsewhere.
Sources (1)
AI-assisted summary, reviewed by our editors — how we work.
Get the daily digest
Top gaming news in Lithuanian — every day at 9:00.