GamingPickz

PAYDAY The Heist

Take on the role of a hardened career criminal executing intense, dynamic heists in constant pursuit of the next “big score”

First-Person ShooterRole-PlayingSimulationStrategy

Your like matters. Every heart nudges this game's GamingPickz Score and where it ranks (a small 5% of the score), so the lists get better for everyone.

Would you recommend it?
Player score
9.3/10
40,968 reviews
Released
2011
Developer
OVERKILL - a Starbreeze Studio.
Platforms
1 systems
Critics
76
Steam Deck
playable
Download
6 GB
We have not written a full review of this game.This is a catalogue entry: everything below comes from a source we can link, checked on a stated date. There is no score and no verdict here, because we only publish those after a reviewer has played the game and written it up properly. Our team may well have played this one. Until someone writes the review, we are not going to imply a verdict we have not put our name to.

What is PAYDAY The Heist?

Take on the role of a hardened career criminal executing intense, dynamic heists in constant pursuit of the next “big score”

Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.

The record

Catalogue facts
First released19 October 2011
DeveloperOVERKILL - a Starbreeze Studio.
PublisherStarbreeze Entertainment
PlatformsPC
GenresFirst-Person Shooter, Role-Playing, Simulation, Strategy
Languages5 supported

Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata , seeded TBA. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.

How was PAYDAY The Heist received?

Players93%positive of 40,968 · Very Positive
Metacritic76critic aggregate, PC
Achievements56on Steam

Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Metacritic page. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.

Accessibility

3 declared features

Seeing

None declared

Hearing

  • Custom Volume Controls
  • Stereo Sound

Input

None declared

Difficulty

  • Adjustable Difficulty

Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.

What does it support?

Technical support
CapabilitySupport
ControllerNot stated
Cloud savesYes
Cross-platform playNo
Mod supportNo official workshop
Online playYes
In-game purchasesNo
Steam Deckplayable
Download size6 GB
Add-on content2 DLC listed
Age gate17+

Content descriptors

  • Frequent violence or gore
  • General mature content

Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.

What does it cost?

$9.99

Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.

Is PAYDAY The Heist worth it?

93% of 40,968 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. It costs $9.99 on Steam, and critics score it 76/100. About 38 people were playing at once when we last checked, so it is still active.

That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. We have not published our own review of this game.

How long is PAYDAY The Heist? How long to beat it

Total play time for PAYDAY The Heist is about 49 hours to do everything, and around 10 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.

PAYDAY The Heist length by how much you play
How you playHoursPlayers logged
Just the main story: straight through the critical path10h73
Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do31.8h44
Completionist: everything: 100% the game49h11

At its current price of $9.99, beating the main story works out to about $1.00 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.

Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.

PAYDAY The Heist system requirements

The minimum requirements from PAYDAY The Heist's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.

PAYDAY The Heist minimum requirements
Memory1 GB RAM (other games at this level)
ProcessorIntel Pentium 4 3 GHz / AMD Athlon XP 3400+
GraphicsNVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX / ATI Radeon X1900
Storage6 GB (more games this size)

Where PAYDAY The Heist sits on the grid

Compare the whole catalogue

PAYDAY The Heist plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.

1 games have both

01000100Players →Popularity →

Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.

Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.

  • PC

Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.

See the ultimate grid

How positions are decided

No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
  • Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
  • Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
  • No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
  • A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
  • Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.

Is PAYDAY The Heist still active? Players right now

38concurrent playerssnapshot, 19 October 2026
28%busier than this shareof the 1,496 games we track
40,223Steam reviews writtenevery one an owner

PAYDAY The Heist has a small, niche following: 38 people were playing at once when we last read Steam on 19 October 2026. This is a snapshot, not a live counter, and it is a recent concurrent reading rather than an all-time record. For what is trending across the catalogue right now, see the pulse.

How many people own PAYDAY The Heist

2.0M–5.0MEstimated owners on Steama band, not a figure · SteamSpy
40,223Reviews writtena floor: every one owns it
38Playing at peak, recentlyconcurrent players

This is an estimate, not a sales figure, and the two are not interchangeable. SteamSpy samples public profiles and publishes a range; the range here spans a factor of 2.5, and that width is the honest part of it. We show both ends rather than a midpoint, because a midpoint would look like a measurement.

Steam only. Console and storefront sales are not counted, so a game that sold heavily elsewhere reads low here. Read on 19 October 2026. Where a publisher has announced a real unit figure, that appears separately and carries its source.

Estimated sales for PAYDAY The Heist

These are estimates, not reported figures. OVERKILL - a Starbreeze Studio. has not published unit sales for PAYDAY The Heist, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.

1.2M–2.5MEstimated copies soldon Steam, lifetime
$4.1M–$16MEstimated player spendbefore Valve's cut
$2.8M–$11MEstimated to the publisherafter the 30% platform cut

How this was calculated

Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.

Sales estimate working
Reviews on Steam40,968
Sales per review30 to 60
List price$9.99
Assumed average selling price33% to 66% of list
SteamSpy owner estimate2.0M–5.0M, a different measure, see below

What this cannot tell you

Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.

The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.

The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.

Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.

If OVERKILL - a Starbreeze Studio. publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.

PAYDAY The Heist price & deals: is it on sale?

We have one reading so far: $9.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.

Latest PAYDAY The Heist updates & patch notes

Pulled from PAYDAY The Heist's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.

  1. PAYDAY Steam Summer Sale · From the studio
  2. New Regional and Simplified Pricing of PAYDAY Games and DLCs · From the studio
  3. PAYDAY Winter Sale Now On! · From the studio
  4. PAYDAY Franchise Sale · From the studio

What readers say about PAYDAY The Heist

Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.

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Where PAYDAY The Heist appears

The ranked lists and finder pages PAYDAY The Heist qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.

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Games like PAYDAY The Heist

24 games overlap with PAYDAY The Heist on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Payday 2, PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2.

All 24 games like PAYDAY The Heist

PAYDAY The Heist head to head

Common questions about PAYDAY The Heist

What platforms is PAYDAY The Heist on?

PAYDAY The Heist is available on PC. It first released in 2011.

How much does PAYDAY The Heist cost?

$9.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.

Do players recommend PAYDAY The Heist?

93% of 40,968 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Very Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.

What is the Metacritic score for PAYDAY The Heist?

76 out of 100 for the PC version, as published on the game's own Steam store page. Steam can lag Metacritic by a few points.

Does PAYDAY The Heist work on Steam Deck?

Valve rates PAYDAY The Heist as playable on the Steam Deck, from its own testing.

How big is the PAYDAY The Heist download?

6 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.

Who made PAYDAY The Heist?

PAYDAY The Heist was developed by OVERKILL - a Starbreeze Studio. and published by Starbreeze Entertainment.

Is PAYDAY The Heist worth it in 2026?

93% of 40,968 Steam reviews are positive (Very Positive), and it is $9.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.

Is PAYDAY The Heist dead?

No. About 38 people were in-game at once when we last read Steam's concurrent-player figure. Peak activity is higher; this is a recent snapshot, not the all-time peak.

Is PAYDAY The Heist on sale?

Not at the moment. PAYDAY The Heist is at its $9.99 list price on Steam, read on 30 August 2026. It has been cheaper before; the price history above shows when.