Dwi Wanna
Thirteen years after its initial release, Payday 2 remains a titan of the co-op first-person shooter genre. While many games of its vintage have long since faded into digital obscurity, the masked heist simulator has maintained an iron grip on its player base. Now, nine months after developer Starbreeze shifted the title’s stewardship to Sidetrack Games to prioritize the development of Payday 3, the new team is proving that they are not merely caretakers—they are visionaries.
In a surprising move that underscores the continued relevance of the franchise, Sidetrack Games has announced "Diesel 3.0," a sweeping engine overhaul designed to modernize the game’s infrastructure, optimize performance, and drastically reduce its storage footprint.
The State of the Heist: A Tale of Two Games
The current landscape of the Payday franchise presents a fascinating dichotomy. On one side, Payday 2—a game that has arguably seen everything—routinely pulls in 30,000 concurrent players on Steam. It is a beloved staple of the PC gaming diet, bolstered by over a decade of continuous content updates, DLC, and a fiercely loyal community.
Conversely, Payday 3, the high-budget successor that was meant to carry the torch, has struggled significantly to maintain relevance, often hovering at a mere 1,000 concurrent players. While Starbreeze continues to work on fixing the newer title, Sidetrack Games has taken the opportunity to ensure that the "old guard" doesn’t just survive, but thrives. By modernizing the foundation of Payday 2, Sidetrack is not only rewarding the players who stayed but is arguably positioning the game to remain competitive for another decade.
Chronology: From Starbreeze to Sidetrack
The transition of power occurred nine months ago, a strategic decision by Starbreeze to allow their internal teams to focus exclusively on the recovery and improvement of Payday 3. At the time, the gaming community expressed skepticism regarding whether an external studio could handle the massive, spaghetti-code architecture of a game as complex as Payday 2.
- September 2025: Official announcement of the hand-off to Sidetrack Games.
- October 2025 – May 2026: Sidetrack begins behind-the-scenes work, auditing the game’s aging code base.
- June 2026: Sidetrack announces the "Diesel 3.0" project, signaling the start of a new technical era for the game.
- June 30, 2026: The scheduled commencement of the Open Beta for the engine upgrade.
- July 2026: The expected conclusion of the beta testing phase, with a rollout to the main branch shortly thereafter.
Under the Hood: The Technical Revolution
The "Diesel 3.0" update is far more than a mere patch; it is a fundamental reconstruction of the game’s engine. Leon Theodoridis, Lead Engine and Tools Developer at Sidetrack Games, describes the update as a "massive rewrite of the entire code base."
The 64-Bit Transition
The most significant technical hurdle being cleared is the transition from a 32-bit to a 64-bit architecture. For years, Payday 2 players have been plagued by "out-of-memory" crashes, a direct consequence of the game’s inability to address more than 4GB of RAM. By moving to 64-bit, Sidetrack is effectively uncapping the game’s potential, allowing for significantly more stable sessions and an end to one of the most frustrating issues in the game’s history.
Rendering and Efficiency
The upgrade also swaps the aging DirectX 9 renderer for DirectX 11. Theodoridis clarifies that this shift is not intended to provide a visual overhaul or "remastered" graphics. Instead, it is a strategic move to optimize how the game handles texture memory. By offloading these processes more efficiently, the game will run more smoothly on modern hardware, reducing the strain on GPUs and providing a more consistent frame rate across a wider range of machine specifications.
The Storage Miracle: A 63% Reduction
Perhaps the most tangible benefit for the average player is the radical reduction in file size. Through a complete overhaul of the game’s packaging and bundling system, Sidetrack has managed to shrink Payday 2 from 86 GB down to 32 GB. This 63% decrease is a masterclass in optimization, made possible by re-evaluating how the game’s assets are compressed and stored.
"We’ve seen all your comments, and they’ve been bugging us for quite a while," Theodoridis says. "You guys have practically been begging us to port the engine to 64-bit, reduce the game’s file size, as well as make it run better in general on more modern hardware."
Official Perspective: Addressing the Community
Sidetrack Games has adopted a policy of radical transparency throughout this process. By acknowledging the community’s persistent requests—some of which have been ignored for nearly a decade—the studio has built a reservoir of goodwill.
The decision to launch an Open Beta is a critical component of this strategy. Sidetrack understands that tampering with the core engine of a 13-year-old game is a high-risk endeavor. By involving the community in the testing process, they hope to identify edge-case bugs that could only be surfaced by a massive player base. The beta, which runs from June 30 through the end of July, will be accessible via the standard Steam "betas" tab, allowing players to opt-in and provide feedback directly to the developers.
The Cost of Progress: Implications for Modders
Every major technical leap comes with a compromise. For Payday 2, the sacrifice lies in its robust modding community. Because the Diesel 3.0 update changes the underlying architecture and file structure, many existing mods will inevitably break.
Theodoridis has been upfront about this reality. "With such a substantial engine change, sadly it’s inevitable that some mods will break," he stated. However, the studio is not leaving the modding community in the dark. Sidetrack has committed to providing support and documentation for the new file formats, hoping to empower creators to repair and update their mods for the new architecture.
For the average player, this may mean a temporary loss of functionality for their favorite custom HUDs or gameplay tweaks. However, the long-term stability and performance gains are expected to outweigh these short-term disruptions.
Looking Forward: Is This the Future of Legacy Titles?
The success of the Diesel 3.0 transition could set a precedent for how legacy titles are handled in the modern era. In an industry that often favors sequels over support, the Payday 2 model suggests that a game’s lifespan is not dictated solely by its release date, but by the commitment of its developers to maintain its technical health.
As the industry moves toward increasingly bloated software, the fact that Sidetrack Games has managed to cut the size of a massive, content-heavy title by more than half is an achievement worth noting. If the Diesel 3.0 beta proves successful, it will not only secure the future of Payday 2 but may well serve as a case study for developers looking to revitalize their own aging classics.
For now, the masked criminals of the Payday gang are getting a new lease on life, and for the thousands of players still logging in to pull off the perfect heist, the future has never looked more stable. The open beta begins on June 30; whether you are a veteran player or someone looking to jump back in, this update marks the most significant turning point in the game’s long, storied history.
Iffa Jayyana
Pevita Pearce
