While characters are often associated with certain Skill Trees and Perk Decks, they are not limited to any and have no additional benefits with any. As new heists were released, players can choose from more characters (including the original Hoxton, once the player breaks him out of custody). In the first year of the game's release, the game only had four playable characters to choose from: smooth mobster Dallas, hardened mercenary Chains, happy-go-lucky Wolf, and Dallas's younger, more serious brother as the new Hoxton.
These funds are used for upgrading your skills, purchasing extra slots for your inventory, weapons, masks, and modifiers for the weapons and guns. The cash funds is tallied at the end of a heist and is determined by the total amount divided by the number of players playing at the end of the mission. This is the money that comes from loot bags and loose cash and jewelry successfully stolen during a heist. The offshore funds can also be used in a hand of gambling through the offshore payday icon on the main map or to achieve infamous level if you are at level 100 and have the correct amount of cash. The main purpose of the offshore funds is used for purchasing contracts from the brokers if you are hosting a game. The offshore funds can be used in several different ways. Your offshore account is money that is presented to you at the beginning of a heist, it is a set amount given if you accomplish all parts of a heist successfully. With each successful heist accomplished you will receive two different types of payments. Some parts of downloadable content were also made outside of Overkill, such as music tracks by electronica artist Le Castle Vania and heists from spin-off developer LionGameLion (who later used the same engine and concept for RAID: World War II). The game received numerous cross-promotional content with not only other games (such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Hotline Miami), but also feature films (such as John Wick and Scarface). Most of these content and updates were rolled into later console versions.
The game has also received numerous downloadable content packs (both free and paid), adding additional weapons, heists, playable characters, and masks.
Over the years, most of Payday 2's gameplay mechanics in the Steam version were updated, expanded, and sometimes completely revamped (including new weapon and enemy types, additional difficulty levels, the ability to drive vehicles, a complete restructure of the Skill Tree system, and full VR support).
Along with an expanded metagame, the game now takes advantage of heists that are both dynamic (with random events and object placements), extended (sometimes splitting the heist into separate levels, or "days"), and completely stealthable.
Using the CRIMENET interface, players can progress through various sizes of heists (from small-time convenience stores to major bank vaults), upgrade their criminal's special skills through Skill Trees, purchase various unlocked weapons and weapon modifications, and customize their unlocked masks with randomly-earned materials, patterns, and pattern colors. The crew now take advantage of CRIMENET, an underground criminal network (led by their handler, the mysterious Bain) where they accept contracts from criminal contacts such as deranged up-and-coming Vlad the Ukrainian, shady American politician "The Elephant", and Colombian drug trafficker Hector. (among, later on, other locales) for an epic crime spree. In this sequel to Payday: The Heist, players team up as masked criminals as they descend on Washington, D.C. It was later released for the Xbox One (on June 26, 2015), PlayStation 4 (on June 16, 2015), Linux (via Steam on March 21, 2016), and Nintendo Switch (ported by Sumo Digital on February 27, 2018).
Payday 2 (stylized as PAYDAY 2) is a co-operative crime-themed first-person shooter developed by Overkill and published by 505 (later by Starbreeze) for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC (via Steam) on August 13, 2013.