I've been playing this game for quite some time and there's some questions that are being asked over and over. I'll do my best to answer a lot of them in this post. Note that I'm also the author of the DAHM mod. This mod was made to unofficially update the game after Overkill abandoned it for PAYDAY 2 and fixes many bugs in this game and adds many of the most commonly requested features. I'm not affiliated with Overkill in any way and you'll have to take my word on that the mod won't do anything other than improve the game, just like you have to do for any other mod and application you're running.

The game has around 100 players on average[steamcharts.com] and still has a small but active community. While its successor, PAYDAY 2, is much bigger on Steam and includes most of the maps, the games aren't carbon copies of one another. PAYDAY: The Heist is less forgiving and can be seen as a hardcore game that's meant to be difficult and is balanced around four player crews. If you want a more accessible game with customization, lots of weapon choices and a greater map pool then PAYDAY 2 is more for you. And while you can (partially) stealth some maps in PAYDAY: The Heist, don't expect too much about this mechanic.

PAYDAY: The Heist does not use any servers but connects individual players instead. The host player is the only one with all the information about the game so host migration is not possible. However, this means that the stability of the connection depends not only on your connection but also that of the other players. The only servers involved are Steam's matchmaking severs to connect players with one another, so if these go down playing this game with others shouldn't be your biggest concern.

That really depends on your understanding of completing the game. An average player can level up to level 145 in around 40-50 hours with normal gameplay and from that point you can get all the achievements. However, it's a difficult game and don't expect to get the 145+ achievements without a team to beat the heists. If you want to max out all challenges you're talking more like 300-500 hours depending on your skill level and play style.

We don't have a crystal ball and we can't tell the future. However, based on historical data[steamdb.info] it goes on sale roughly every three months.

Yes, buying the Wolfpack DLC for PAYDAY: The Heist will grant you a license to use it in both games. The DLC with the same name for the second game will not grant you a license to use it in this game, but it can only be bought from key resellers anyway. The same thing applies to the DLC that comes bundled with the Ultimate Edition bundle for PD2. It's just a one way deal.

Probably. The game doesn't need much to run. For a first person shooter like this you should aim for 60 frames per second. If the ingame settings are not enough, then there's tweaks to significantly reduce the quality of the graphics. Just don't expect the best visual experience, even on high end PCs.

For some reason the games dependencies are not automatically installed and don't come bundled with Windows. That means you have to install DirectX manually. For a webinstaller that includes all versions, see https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35. You don't have to manually install PhysX for your NVIDIA card if you're using the latest drivers.

If for some reason the web installer does not work, you can manually install the necessary file. Download the 32 bit version of d3dx9_40.dll and place it in %WinDir%/syswow64/ (or the game directory). You can find the file here: https://wikidll.com/microsoft/d3dx9_40-dll.

While the game does have support for saving files to the Steams Cloud, you should not rely on this as a backup. By default you can find the relevant files in C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/userdata/<SteamID3>/24240/remote. If you have used multiple accounts, you can find the ID3 value with the use of external tools like https://steamid.io/. You'll need the numeric part after the last colon. The save000.sav file contains your options (and mask choice) and save099.sav is your progress file.

While the game does actually support setting the refresh rates for each resolution, the first and usually lowest refresh rate available is used when you set the resolution via the GUI. To fix this you can either manually edit the %LocalAppData%/PAYDAY/renderer_settings.xml file or use the DAHM mod, which lets you select the refresh rate from the GUI.

You can't. There is HUD scaling, but it's only for SD to HD and adding full scaling support via mods is too much work for little gain. You're better off using a lower resolution as you won't get much of an increase in graphical quality in this game anyway. That being said, the DAHM mod does have an option to upscale the GUI.

Yes, it does. The task scheduler that manages where cops go, who they attack and when they attack and updates once on every game tick / refresh. The actions of each individual unit, such as shooting and sprinting, are processed separately and also once per frame. So they shoot faster, react more quickly to events and move to your position faster when you play at 130 FPS (the limit on PC) compared to PCs that don't reach this framerate cap. The task scheduler is only involved when you shoot, but the other actions are per client. Since there is no normalization on the task scheduling (unless the host uses the DAHM mod), you may find some lobbies being much easier than others even if your ping to the host is similar.

While PAYDAY: The Heist does not officially support controllers, it's possible to enable it with the DAHM mod. No need to toy around with keyboard emulators, those don't give you the true analog input.

Yes, it is possible! Just not out of the box. You'll need the DAHM mod for features like this.

By default you can set a multiplayer value between 0.3 and 1.7. If you want to use another value you'll have to use a mod like DAHM.

You can't. If the volume is too low on average, lower the other sound sliders and max out the voice chat volume. Boosting your own volume isn't possible either nor can you see when you are transmitting something via your microphone. If that is not good enough you'll have to resort to external solutions like the external Steam voice chat or something like Discord.

These translations have been made by the community and are not officially supported by Overkill so use those at your own risk. If you still want to use them, you can find some here:

• Chinese[yun.baidu.com]
  
• Japanese[sites.google.com] (I couldn't get this one to work)
  
• Korean[modworkshop.net]
  
• Russian

Unfortunately PAYDAY: The Heist no longer receives any official support. The DAHM mod fixes a lot of issues, but it can't do everything. If it's not fixed with the mod you can make a thread about it on these discussion boards, but it's probably not easily fixable by the community.

edit 2025-09-07: fixed dx installer url.