Need for Speed™ Payback

Set in the underworld of Fortune Valley, you and your crew were divided by betrayal and reunited by revenge to take down The House, a nefarious cartel that rules the city’s casinos, criminals and cops. In this corrupt gambler’s paradise, the stakes are high and The House always wins.

Need for Speed™ Payback is a racing, open world and multiplayer game developed by Ghost Games and published by Electronic Arts.
Released on June 18th 2020 is available only on Windows in 11 languages: English, French, Spanish - Spain, Italian, German, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

It has received 28,099 reviews of which 24,083 were positive and 4,016 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.4 out of 10. 😎

The game is currently priced at 29.99€ on Steam.

The Steam community has classified Need for Speed™ Payback into these genres:

Racing Open World Multiplayer Combat Racing Controller Sports PvP Sandbox Arcade Third Person First-Person Strategy Offroad Vehicular Combat Simulation Co-op Atmospheric Online Co-Op Singleplayer Action

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at Need for Speed™ Payback through various videos and screenshots.

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Requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS *: 64-bit Windows 7 or later
Processor: Intel i3 6300 @ 3.8GHz or AMD FX 8150 @ 3.6GHz with 4 hardware threads
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 750 Ti or AMD Radeon™ HD 7850 or equivalent DX11 compatible GPU with 2GB of memory
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 30 GB available space

Reviews

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Dec. 2024

Do yourself a favor, and play it with the Unite 1.2 mod. It makes the handling much better, the drifting more engaging, and the cops more ruthless. It also removes the random speed cards and allows you to buy the ones you want directly from the store, just like you'd buy parts in any other game. As soon as that speed card system is out, the game becomes much more enjoyable. Definitely worth it when on sale.

Dec. 2024

I'll recommend this because, despite the many usual NFS issues, and a few issues that are unique to this game, the writing is surprisingly good. It's not all perfect, it's frequently corny, but it works where it counts. It's not about... idk, winning races for the prestige, or to TAKE BACK THE STREETS or because this race is JUST SO IMPORTANT. The story is happening because sports makes money and some people do bad things for money, they hurt people. That's real stakes, there's a real story here, and you never meet anyone who's just a 1-dimensional douchebag like in so many other titles where they want you to just hate your opponents because they think toxic banter and pure resentment is going to make the races better somehow. The world isn't full of sore losers whose enormous egos shatter because they lost one race. Your rivals seem like they're going to just be annoying, then you have conversations with them and you find out their story, and why they hate The House, and then you respect each other after the races are over. There are some surprisingly nice moments. The Gambler is an ambiguous character who's really well written, acted and animated, and I'm curious to see what he's going to do. Your main characters - you drive as three different people - are likeable too. They care about each other, and they talk about it. You want them to succeed. There are a bunch of mechanical problems with the game. The upgrading system is silly - apparently a different engine head can improve your *checks notes* braking and jumping ability. It's clearly just there to tie into the weird roulette system that also ties into the microtransation crap. I know there's a whole gambling subplot but there's nothing that ties them together, I think it was just an excuse to use all the gambling knowledge that you gain working on modern microtransaction hell. Also some of the open world activities are shallow, like police chases where you have to hit all the checkpoints like it's a timed race, and the cops magically keep respawning until you reach the end where they magically disappear. It's literally just a checkpoint race where the cops are also there. And the driving? It's okay, it's a NFS game, it's arcadey. It's okay. But I'm pushing through all that junk because I actually care about the story.

Oct. 2024

Need For Speed Payback might be the best NFS title of the last decade after Heat. The game got almost everything. Especially the story was good. For me, this is the only game after Most Wanted 2005 that has a decent story. All that rival races, the factions, trash talks, inclusion of more characters everything adds up. Graphics are good, apparently i don't see a major difference when compared to Heat in terms of graphics. The only thing the game don't have is better cop system. There is no cops patrolling and no cop chases except for unmissable story missions also you can avoid cops with your eyes closed there is no challenge. Story 9/10 Graphics 8.5/10 Soundtracks 8.5/10 Gameplay 9/10 Physics 8.5/10 Overall a fun action packed Need for speed, 8.5/10

Sept. 2024

---{Graphics}--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ Atari ---{Gameplay}--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It‘s just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch video instead ☐ Just don't ---{Audio}--- ☑ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ I'm now deaf ☐ My ears bleeding ---{Audience}--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ All ---{PC Requirements}--- ☐ Toast Machine ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich ☐ Nasa ---{Difficulity}--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{Grind}--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isnt necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You‘ll need a second life for grinding ---{Story}--- ☐ No Story ☑ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ Better than your life ---{Game Time}--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ Infinity ---{Price}--- ☐ It’s free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{Bugs}--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ Cyberbug 2077 ---{?/10}--- ☐1 ☐2 ☐3 ☐4 ☐5 ☐6 ☐7 ☑8 ☐9 ☐10

June 2024

So... Payback. When it launched it got hated for it's speedcards system, but now? Honestly, it's a pretty fun game. I had a good time, the driving's fun and the campaign is long enough to give you stuff to do, but not too long to get boring. But of course, Payback is far from perfect, and it has some glaring issues. This includes: speedcards (Yes, they still suck), the reset system (janky as hell, and it never feels right) and the main gripe, the offroad physics. They are atrocious, and i never got used to them throughout the whole career. Your car understeers and oversteers depending on it's mood, and some of the offroad races will literally turn you into the joker. That being said. despite it's shortcomings, it's a good game. Definetly better than 2015. Play it if you got it, if you don't buy it on sale, it's fun :)

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Data sources

The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.

Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.

Last Updates

Steam data	22 November 2024 08:06
SteamSpy data	19 January 2025 09:50
Steam price	22 January 2025 20:25
Steam reviews	21 January 2025 17:47

29.99€

8.4

24,083

4,016

Online players

275

Developer

Ghost Games

Publisher

Electronic Arts

Release 18 Jun 2020

Platforms