Players review-bomb Payday 2 h3h3 Character Pack on Steam

Hila Klein revealed on October 23 that Ethan was unfaithful and called him her partner in marriage, in parenting, and in business, and soon after 104 negative reviews for Payday 2’s h3h3 Character Pack arrived on Steam, with 28 more the next morning.

Players are responding to Hila Klein’s disclosure rather than to a patch or any statement from Starbreeze Studio. The developer did not respond to community questions on Steam discussion pages, and the pack remained available in the store at publication.

Among the pack’s contents are a quick-firing bow, explosive and poisoned arrows, masks, and playable versions of Ethan and Hila. The scandal left the contents unchanged.

Overkill made the h3h3 Character Pack in 2017 to raise money for Ethan and Hila Klein’s legal defense in the Matt Hoss copyright case, pledging the revenue to the couple. Ethan raised $170,000 to support other creators’ rights and once championed fair use, and TheGamer says the Matt Hoss case threatened to create a damning legal precedent for YouTube reaction content. Merlin’in Kazanı calls the case important for YouTube reaction content and fair use discussions.

In July 2026, a judge threw out Ethan’s copyright infringement case against Twitch streamers Denims, Frogan, and Kaceytron, pointing to Ethan’s own 2017 precedent. Ethan had brought that case because the streamers reacted to his video.

An iDubbbz Content Cop video targeted Ethan after he cut himself off from the wider YouTube community. He later released a Content Nuke on Hasan Piker, calling it partly a trap to catch other creators and saying it worked better than expected.

Ethan Klein and Hasan Piker broke apart publicly in 2023 during their Israeli-Palestinian conflict dispute, which ended the Leftovers podcast. During the dispute, Ethan pushed back on what he described as antisemitic rhetoric online, while Hasan argued that criticism of Israeli policy and a United Nations commission ruling of genocide in Gaza do not amount to antisemitism, and that accusations of antisemitism are often used to stop Palestinian human rights advocacy. Ethan said he remains critical of Israel’s government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Past review waves had hit the pack because of Hila’s required IDF service, which included a West Bank transfer request and a Ramallah night raid, and because of Ethan’s 2023 break with Hasan Piker. A Steam discussion from September 24, 2023 shows players were flamed and sometimes kicked from matches for picking Ethan as a heister, showing the character carried stigma long before the current wave.

Steam players suggested the DLC looks worse with time, and one reviewer said it has aged even more terribly after nearly a decade. Negative reviews play on the double meaning of cheating, covering both in-game cheating and infidelity, and at least one player said online play as Ethan got him flagged as a cheater. Some Steam users left minimum scores with comments mixing criticism of Ethan’s behavior with references to the game’s plot. SpaceMoney said the fallout from Hila Klein’s statement spread outside games and then moved into the Payday 2 community.

Some players argue that adding real people directly to games can cause unexpected problems for developers years later, while others are buying the pack as a collector’s item because they fear it will soon be removed from sale. TheGamer points to player reviews that object to placing real people in games, encourage purchases before any removal, and joke about a divorce update dividing the perk deck.

Ethan said he would sell his shares in podcasts, Teddy Fresh, Teddy Glow, and other joint ventures, sending the money to Hila and the crew, while saying nothing about the DLC. He made the announcement on October 24.

TheGamer says the pack is facing its largest wave of negative reviews ever, and Merlin’in Kazanı describes the recent surge as one of the strongest of its kind, with both linking the spike to the affair. Both outlets treat the pack as a measure of how fans feel about the couple.

Hila Klein called Ethan her safe place and her only family nearby, saying she was in survival mode while dealing with separation, co-parenting, and heartbreak. She wrote, “The person I loved and trusted for 20 years evaporated overnight.”