The feature will finally make an appearance.

Ghost Games has announced via a tweet that online free roam is coming to Need for Speed Payback in 2018. It appears that the feature will be a free update not a paid DLC.

https://twitter.com/NeedforSpeed/status/947829788663726080

The feature was present in previous iterations of the Need for Speed franchise including the 2015 game also developed by Ghost Games. That’s why the omission suprised many users.

As for now there is no date set for the update. NFS: Payback is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.