On the 25th of October 2019, with an announcement from the new Starbreeze CEO Mikael, Payday 2 "rose from the dead", resuming development of both paid and free DLCs. On the very same day, the Border Crossing Heist DLC dropped on the Steam store, along with 19 new vague achievements, forming the sentence:

"My Dear Friends, It's Time We Get Back To Work, Yeah? I Know A Great Place, Ripe For Plunder."

News - Winds of Change

https://steamhost.cn/app/1184411/PAYDAY_2_Border_Crossing_Heist/

However, the 19 new achievements weren't quite the same.
Instead of the regular unknown achievement icon, we got something different.

Upon a closer look, we'll see a tiny little clue; the icons themselves, each are numbered, right in the lower corner, like the "1" right here.


And rearranging the labels in numerical order gives us something new, but made no sense:

"Know Friends, Great Ripe Back Plunder. My Place, It's I A Get Yeah? To Dear Time For Work, We"

However, we still had more to go on with... Red X? Blue Y? What does these even mean? X-ses and Y-s does seem to suggest coordinates but there aren't any numbers... yet.

Upon noticing that the odd colourings for each icon were different, a bright idea went off somewhere, leading to a whole new set of clues. As it turns out, there were more information hidden via the colour channels, and when fiddled with in an image editing software, revealed themselves.

(Using GIMP 2 image editing software, with all colour channels on)



(Red channel only)



(Green channel only)



(Blue channel only)



(The numbers revealed)


With the numbers revealed, this gives us a new step to embark on, the Red X, and the Blue Y.

Even with the new revelation itself, nothing seemed clear.

What are these numbers and what do they represent? Are they decimals? If they are, why does 0 and 9 not appear? Are they octals? There's an 8 in there, so it can't be. What are the dashes? Are they coordinates? No way, the numbers aren't in that format.

And with that, attempts were made to group the numbers. So 19 icons, 19 sets of Red X and Blue Y numbers.






It still doesn't make any sense. What if the dashes were separators? And that, when taken into consideration, gives us 25 sets of numbers.

The sets of numbers, for a good while, continued to stumble many. And after a period of racking brains (more like wrecking), the numbers were concluded to be hints to a Nonogram (or Picross as I know it).

(You can attempt the puzzle yourself here[nonograms.relaxpuzzles.com])


And when solved, it reveals the next step.

It's a QR code!

Making use of the completed puzzle, it will lead us to the reward!


Using a QR code scanner will provide us with the following: https://ovk.af/egg
Following the link will lead us to a final teaser for the Border Crossing Heist DLC!

Here's another angle of the teaser image:

First, I take no credit for anything presented. I do not have the full information of who did what, who solved what at which step, so I opted to do this in the form of storytelling. The very purpose of this, is to keep a record of the ARG, as well as to applaud the effort and design of the Overkill crew. Enjoy this piece of Payday 2 history.