The potentially unintentional PAYDAY: The Heist update 1.22.0

On a normal day after a Nintendo Direct had finished up, I decided I was going to play some good old PAYDAY: The Heist. I was about ready to launch the game when I noticed that there was an update required to the game. “Strange,” I thought, this game hasn’t updated since December of 2012. Regardless, I inquired about the update with a peer and they also confirmed that they got an update. There were no patch notes available anywhere, and nobody seemed to know what was going on. It was first noticed on the Payday subreddit on Nov 12 2015 at 17:12:53 GMT -600.

As soon as I launched the game, it was apparent that there was a new button on the main menu labeled “debug”. I did not take a screenshot of the menu, but a steam user by the name of “AerHx” took a screenshot.

“Godmode? That sure doesn’t sound good. Is this a joke?” After launching the game with godmode activated, I was still able to join lobbies. It most definitely was not a joke and worked.

After messing around a bit more (don’t worry, I didn’t cheat and get free money), I found out that you could also access the debug menu in-game. It had more options. Some options included giving yourself a huge amount of experience/money, disabling the team AI or enabling it on the fly, and even going freecam. There were also buttons for turning on your current coordinates and for giving you an MP5, for some reason.

After the other user in the image had their game crash, they realized that the game updated again. The update removed the debug menu, meaning only very few people were able to experience the entire update in the first place. Because I think these kinds of things are important, I force quit Steam before I closed the game, making it so my game could not update. I have backed up all the files that were changed should I ever want to access them again. They could prove to be quite helpful.

After backing up the files and downloading the update that removed the debug menu, I decided to compare some files. In the version number for the revert, it says the game is version 1.21.0. After looking at the version number for debug menu game, it said version 1.22.0. The update to fix the debug menu came out about 50 minutes after the initial update enabling it hit. Therefore, 1.22.0 was not ready for shipment.

What could this all mean? Does OVERKILL want to ruin the PAYDAY: The Heist experience to move people on to Payday 2? Did an angry dev ship out this update to mess with the company, or was this all an accident? Regardless, it looks like OVERKILL either had or has plans for the future of PAYDAY: The Heist. As of the writing of this article, there is no official word from OVERKILL, and this seems to be the most extensive look at the accidental update. This was written shortly after it hit.

Stay cautious, heisters.