Except they don't. They make it VERY clear in the first game what kind of people you are.
- In Diamond Heist, if your codes for the vault don't work, you have to kidnap the CFO to get Mr. Garnet to give you the codes. If he doesn't give you the codes, your Mission Control guy drops him 3 stories through a plate glass ceiling and then tells Mr. Garnet that he'll do the same to Garnet's son if he doesn't give you the codes.
- In Heat Street, the Payday gang outright says that they'll cut off Mike's hand if they can't get the cuffs off him at the safe house. This is after you pour gasoline on his crashed car (with him inside) and light it on fire to get him to surrender.
- In No Mercy, after you incapacitate a whole room full of people, you proceed to draw a rather excessive amount of blood out of a dying man. It's implied that doing this is very painful and actually making his condition worse.
- Canonically, they shoot and kill the manager of First World Bank (according the newspapers scattered through some levels) though this might be the mob covering their tracks.
About the only redeeming thing about the Payday gang is that they don't steal from normal people. They knock over a mob bank, reminding everyone in the lobby that all of their money is insured anyway and only the mob and the bank will feel the sting. They steal diamonds from one of the Wall Street guys responsible for the Great Recession. They take printing plates from a counterfeiting ring. They hack a million dollars out of an account owned by a shady corporation, who was in the middle of buying off the IRS for their illegal activities.
In the world of Payday, it's bad people against worse people. There are no heroes, just guys looking to make some money.
