Parts of the community of Dead by Daylight are fed up. A boycott is intended to awaken the developers so that problems are finally addressed.
For years, there has been a “tradition” with Dead by Daylight that new chapters come with a lot of bugs and issues. Despite the developers’ claims that they would do better in the future, little has changed. Now players are “sick of it” and are calling for a boycott in the Dead by Daylight subreddit. The corresponding post exploded and now the hashtag “DeadbyBoycott” has even surpassed the official “#DeadbyDaylight” hashtag on Twitter.
What’s going on? In the DbD subreddit, a player wrote a fairly lengthy post calling for a boycott of Dead by Daylight. To send a message to the developers, players are advised not to make any purchases with real money or real currency (Auric Cells) in the game within the next 3 months.
What bothers the players? A whole lot. Chapter releases have consistently been incomplete or flawed for years, and it often takes several months for the corresponding bugs to be fixed – sometimes only after 3 chapters later. The user forFeiix highlighted some examples.
- A Binding of Kin: The chapter introduced the Twins, but the killer and their perks were riddled with bugs, making them almost unplayable. Additionally, there were many visual display errors, especially in the game menus.
- All Kill: The chapter introduced the killer “The Trickster,” who immediately became the worst killer of all time. While there were a few minor buffs, the killer remains extremely unpopular and practically unusable at higher ranks. For most players, the “All Kill” chapter was the DLC that improved the Plague and the Spirit, as they received buffs and long-needed bug fixes.
- Resident Evil: The latest chapter joins a game full of bugs. Only a few hours after launch, the new map “Raccoon City Police Station” was disabled due to crashes for some players. To this day, this bug has not been fixed and the map remains disabled. The performance of the game has suffered massively on all platforms due to this chapter. On older consoles, the game is hardly playable, and the use of various abilities – such as the Tentacle Strike of the Nemesis – causes stutters and lags for all players in the lobby.
But the criticism doesn’t stop there. There are still many major issues in Dead by Daylight that the developers ignore. These include:
- The perk grind: Unlocking perks in Dead by Daylight is organized in such a way that the effort increases exponentially with each new patch. Anyone wanting all perks on their characters must invest more and more hours into the game. For newcomers, this is hardly manageable, and even veterans demand significant improvements to be made to reduce the grind.
- The events: Dead by Daylight regularly hosts small in-game events with bonus blood points and additional tasks. However, the events have become weaker over the years, with simpler or downright boring tasks. In the last major event, there were only shop skins available for purchase at the start. Only after massive player criticism did the developers change the event so that a few skins could also be earned.
What is being demanded? A whole lot. Behaviour should stop producing DLCs “on the assembly line” and concentrate instead on the state of the game. For many players, it is unbearable that a game for which they regularly pay money is constantly plagued with bugs and important features are not working.
The boycott is not meant to “destroy Behaviour” but rather to awaken the developers and publishers to the fact that players will not put up with this any longer. There is hope that the developers will take more time for improvements and enhance the overall state of the game.
What does the boycott look like? Several things are suggested. These include:
- No purchases in Dead by Daylight for the next 3 months.
- Using the hashtag “#DeadByBoycott” on Twitter.
- Adding “#DeadbyBoycott” to their own Steam name.
- Asking content creators if they have heard of the boycott, without bothering them.
Has it already had a notable success? In a way, yes. If you search for “DeadBy” on Twitter, the hashtag “DeadByBoycott” currently appears first, which at least suggests that the action is generating attention. The corresponding post in the Dead by Daylight subreddit has also received over 5,000 upvotes – quite a lot for this subreddit.
Whether the whole action will really achieve anything or simply fizzles out, we will likely find out in the coming weeks and months. Perhaps Behaviour will also respond to the entire action by then. Until then, all players must decide for themselves whether to join the boycott or consider the matter to be of little benefit.
How will you handle it?
