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Payday: The Heist will be free on Steam for 24 hours this Thursday

Payday: The Heist

If a heist takes you 24 hours, you’re doing it wrong. Bank-robbing’s best done in under 24 minutes – in and out before Bob Security’s looked up from his coffee.

Payday, however, is all about doing it wrong – setting off all the alarms and refilling the vaults with piled-high policemen. Overkill have made the game that made their name free for a day – so that you can spend all of Thursday night playing out the best 10 minutes of Heat.

Payday: The Heist will be free for 24 hours from 10am Pacific / 6pm UK time on Thursday. Overkill say we can expect “clear instructions” on how to download it on the day.

The free day was initially scheduled for October 18 – but brought forward after the Payday Steam Community reached all of their stretch goals early.

Since the summer, Overkill have been incentivising new sign-ups to their Steam page with gated rewards: unlocked Old Hoxton Breakout DLC, day/night options for certain Heists, a new GenSec enemy type. That sort of thing.

Now that the community is 1,500,000 strong, they’ve reached the last, mystery reward – part of Overkill’s month-long ‘Crimefest’.

“You guys have made one hell of an effort during the pasts months. Truly, we in the Overkill crew salute you,” wrote the devs.

“We’ve got a crazy month ahead of us so make sure you got your schedule cleared because this month is the month of #FREEHOXTON.”

Month, month, month. Are any of you lot still playing The Heist’s excellent sequel, Payday 2?