The Payday 3 beta is less than a week away

Payday 3
(Image credit: Starbreeze Studios/Deep Silver)

Co-op heist FPS Payday 3 is finally due to launch in September after years of waiting, but the impending beta will give you a chance to play the game even sooner.

The Payday 3 closed beta will run from August 2 through August 7 on PC via Steam and Xbox Series X and S. On Steam, you can hit the Payday 3 store page and request beta access there, while on console you'll need to go through the Xbox Insider Hub. Access will be given out randomly, and the devs say there's no way to increase your chances of selection.

The beta will feature a limited selection of four characters - the original crew of Dallas, Hoxton, Chains, and Wolf - and a single heist. "Representative of classic Payday heists," the devs say in a press release, "'No Rest for the Wicked' tasks the players with liberating a small bank of the cash cluttering up their vault. Heisters can carefully plot out a stealthy approach, leaving guards to wonder where the millions stored inside went, or go loud to get the nail-biting feeling of a big city bank robbery."

You can get more details in the official FAQ, but the most relevant thing to take note of is this bit: "The main purpose of this beta is to test our servers and the stability of the game experience." In other words, you can expect this to be more of a technical test, so there are likely to be more issues than you'd hope for from the proper day one release.

For more on what to expect, check out our Payday 3 hands-on. 

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.