PAYDAY 3 enters Steam's most played top 100 amid free weekend and 70% sale

PAYDAY 3 is free to play on Steam until today, November 9, and the base game is 70 percent off at $8.99 instead of $29.99. Starbreeze Entertainment announced the free weekend and sale in two Steam posts on November 3. On November 8, the heist shooter ranked 91 on Steam's most played chart with a daily peak of 18,891 concurrent players. A week earlier it was not in the top 100.

The exact end of the free weekend depends on where you look. Starbreeze's Steam posts give 18:00 CET / 09:00 PST / 13:00 EST, while the table on the official PAYDAY site lists November 9th 2026 19:00 CET. Anyone planning a last session should go by the earlier time. Progress made during the free weekend stays on the account if you buy the game later, according to the developer. The official site says the Steam sale itself runs until November 12th 2026. In its Steam post, Starbreeze adds that the Geared Up Bundle, with eleven DLC packs of weapons and cosmetics, gets an extra 10 percent on top of the weekend discounts.

Running in the same window is a Double Infamy Event, announced on November 5. It speeds up Infamy gains and therefore skill points; players already at max Infamy earn Renown for rewards or can spend it to steal items from Crimebonds.

What has changed since launch

Starbreeze pitches the weekend with "over 3 years of content updates and improvements": formerly paid DLC heists are now free, there is a new Campaign Mode, the CRIME.NET server browser is back, and the skill and armor systems were reworked as Skills 2.0 and Armor 2.0. PCGamesN reported that the September third-anniversary update rolled all previously paid heists into the base game, with a commitment that future additions will also be free; owners of the old DLCs get a special reward for each one. According to PCGamesN, Starbreeze also admitted that "the story isn't really that good for Payday 3" and rearranged the existing heists into a new, complete storyline.

Update 3.10 from October 26 added a new Crimebond, the Feeding Frenzy Heist and so-called headless Nebula accounts. Per the official changelog, new players no longer need to create a Nebula account; one is generated automatically and tied to the platform account. A manually created account still unlocks extras such as Cross-Platform Progression and a cross-platform friends list.

A slow recovery

The background matters for anyone who left early. GameSpot summed up the 2023 launch as beset with technical issues, low player numbers and an unpopular mandatory online-only requirement. According to SteamDB, the all-time peak of 77,938 concurrent players dates from launch day, 21 September 2023. Starbreeze later announced an agreement with Plaion to take over the publishing rights, as GameSpot reported, and Steam now lists Starbreeze Entertainment as developer and publisher. PCGamesN called the September update the studio's "Hail Mary" moment, possibly its last chance to sink or swim.

Kotaku, in its free-weekend roundup, wrote that the game "remains in recovery mode after its terrible launch" and quoted one Steam reviewer: "Launched badly, but it’s slowly taking a turn for the better." On Steam, the game drew 563 new reviews in 30 hours, about 450 a day against an average of 59 since release, and 62 percent of those new reviews are positive. The overall score remains Mixed at 46 percent of 67,837 reviews.

For anyone curious, today is the last chance to try it at no cost; after that, the 70 percent discount on Steam holds until November 12. The official site also lists a free weekend on PlayStation 5, and Xbox Wire includes PAYDAY 3 in its Free Play Days.