when i look up "diamond store" on google, it comes up with jewelry

i dont think many stores sell just diamonds

This is probably what happened in development:

Developer 1: Hey, how's that new jewelry store map going?
Developer 2: It's great, way better than the cheap-ass Jewelry Store we shipped with the game at launch.
Developer 1: Okay, good... Wait a minute. If that's a jewelry store, and we already have a jewelry store in the game called Jewelry Store, what are we going to name this one?
Developer 2: I don't know... Diamond Store?
Developer 1: *shrug* Works for me.

I highly doubt it's anything beyond that. There's your answer, the rest of this post is a rant.

The reason that there's been no discussion here is because there never was a Secret. The Guide of Bain, Cagliostro and all that was a bunch of bullshit concocted by OVERKILL that, at the most, has planned for a conclusion or reveal of some kind by the end of this game's life cycle (Which isn't too far from now), and at the least was a scrapped idea that they never followed up on because they didn't feel like it. Remember - Safe House Customization wasn't a thing for four years, and only came back because of popular demand since it was mentioned in the Guide of Bain and one piece of dialogue you hear in the first fifteen minutes of the game.

OVERKILL has a habit of doing this, mentioning things or making promises only to fulfill them years later, if ever - Hell, the "Quest for Kento" was supposed to be a follow-up to the backstory they established with Jiro when he was first released, and in the end it was pretty much just an acknowledgement of that backstory because nothing was even close to resolved.

Take a look through PAYDAY 2's updates pages, and that god-awful web series they made as promotional material, and you'll find a bunch of other ideas that were just kind of thrown at the wall and apparently didn't stick. Greta, that one bitch from the web series who never appears anywhere again. Jacob Fallere, GenSec's Vice President who appears on a news article on the Death Wish update page[www.overkillsoftware.com], as well as the official GenSec website that very few people probably remember exists at all[gensec.biz], who was never mentioned again. Hell, the GenSec website was never updated even though they say that they'll "Update it with both new and old reports" - I'm pretty damn sure everybody at OVERKILL except the poor web designer who made the page remembers that they made a GenSec website, and I'm still doubtful that the web designer even remembers he made it! Hell, from what I've heard of David Goldfarb before he left OVERKILL, he was known for just saying shit that he wanted to add into the game, like adding a sixth tier to the old skill trees, or adding weapon attachments that acted as tasers or C4 detonators or some shit.

For all we know, and for all I care, the Big Secret was just another one of these early ideas that OVERKILL just stopped working on. Maybe it was a LOST scenario, and they just didn't know how to tie up all the loose ends and mysteries they had created at first, and they stalled with little easter eggs and references to drip-feed the players still hanging on - Most of those players have probably abandoned PAYDAY 2 by this point anyway. OVERKILL originally wanted to scrap the Secret, but they dug themselves into a hole and decided to stall until they figured something out? Maybe they just wanted to spend more development time pushing out DLC than developing the Secret.

At the end of the day, the reason that this above all the other ideas that I've mentioned still stays somewhat relevant is because of its intristic nature. A character or idea is mentioned twice, and then never seen again? You figure that the studio just scrapped them. But a Secret is very different, because it's expected to not be seen or acknowledged. If a guy asks about whatever happened to motherfucking Jacob Fallere, the devs can be honest (for once) and say that they just decided they didn't want to keep pursuing him as a character, he didn't fit with their vision or whatever. If a guy asks about the Secret, someone can say "We can't talk about that" or Almir can type out a winky face, people will assume that this means that the Secret is in the game, and OVERKILL doesn't even have to properly acknowledge the question. It's hard to disprove to a lot of people, because there's not a lot surrounding the Secret that's tangible besides the Guide of Bain, and it's very easy to excuse it by saying that it's simply "hidden."

Here's the thing - With the big and resourceful Internet communities surrounding video games, ARGs get solved incredibly fast. Remember when VALVe teased the release of MvM for TF2 with a bunch of encrypted files as part of an ARG? They thought that it would take two weeks for people to solve that - It took barely two days. Or was it two hours? Doesn't matter. If you play Overwatch, or pay attention to it, you'll remember the ARG that Blizzard constructed to tease the release of Sombra was drawn out for a dreadfully long time because people find the clues and solve the puzzles almost as soon as they're dropped, and Blizzard was still spending months actually developing Sombra. Hell, just look at the original Overdrill ARG for PAYDAY: The Heist; That shit was drawn out just about three months before it was solved, and it's not like that shit was there the whole time - They had six patches between the release of the Wolf Pack DLC which kicked off the whole shibang, one only three days before it was announced that someone had discovered it, so it's very possible that they could have snuck it into any of those patches if they felt that the community was getting close to solving the Secret. So, are we just saying that OVERKILL was that good at making the Payday 2 Secret, that nobody's found a goddamn thing in what is now almost six fucking years? Nobody's found more images embedded in static, nobody's discovered a hidden message delivered via a lamp in the warehouse of Framing Frame Day 2 blinking out Morse code, nobody's found hidden shit by digging through the game files or using a trainer, nobody's gotten any proof beyond symbols and acknowledgements at what the Secret actually could be? You may as well be hunting for alien lizard people hiding amongst humanity based in Atlantis, guarded by Cthlulu and his army of undead unicorns. Actually, just have some ancient loot that you can steal and you may as well make that the PAYDAY 2 Secret, because I would definitely play that mission.

The real secret behind the Secret is that there never was a Secret. All of the evidence suggests that it's been nothing but a wild goose chase. If they ever decide to bring out "the Secret," it'll be a planned release and reveal, maybe on some official Twitch broadcast or some shit like that.

Well, i guess i just wasted my time, since when i wrote this it was wild me at fucking midnight, but thanks anyway for the explanation.

I don't blame you for looking - Obviously I did too, otherwise I wouldn't be subscribed to this group (Which I forgot to unsubscribe to, but that's beside the point now). It's just that after logging over 1000 hours in this game and looking through all the details available to you, you start to realize that what you spent all that time looking for probably only ever existed as an idea. My salt's directed at OVERKILL, not anybody here.