A new system is now active in Dead by Daylight. Players who leave a game early will not be able to play for a while.
Dead by Daylight has been plagued for years by some unsavory player behaviors. One of the biggest problems is the “Disconnecters.” Some players with a bad mood or low frustration tolerance leave the match early if they are found by the killer first. This makes it nearly impossible for the other survivors to successfully finish the match, drastically decreasing their chances of victory.
Now Dead by Daylight is taking action against this behavior and automatically imposing increasingly severe penalties on such players. The system has been tested before.
What has changed? Since February 11, 2020, Dead by Daylight has introduced a penalty for players who leave a match early. These players will then be unable to search for matches for a period of time and must effectively serve their penalty. The more often one flees from a game in this way, the greater the penalty. It starts at a few seconds but can extend to minutes and hours. Any kind of leaving the match early counts as a disconnect, such as:
- Turning off the PC or console.
- Pulling out the internet cable.
- Quitting the game.
- Leaving the game via the “Leave Match” button.
If you finish matches properly, the penalty will gradually decrease over time.
The penalties are currently active on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. For Xbox, they are still pending, as there are no dedicated servers there yet.
What about an accidental disconnect? Some players worry that they will now also be punished for an accidental disconnect, such as during a power outage or a brief interruption of the internet connection. This is indeed correct. However, the penalty for rare disconnects is so brief that when reconnecting to the game, the penalty is likely to have expired already.
However, anyone with a generally unreliable internet connection will be out of luck, as the developers state in the official forum:
If you frequently lose your internet connection, you should ensure to fix these issues as soon as possible. Your disconnection negatively affects the enjoyment of the other four players in the match.
The “excuse” of a poor internet connection is not accepted by Behaviour.
Penalties decrease over time: If you accumulate a long-time penalty and are worried about the next one, you simply need to not leave games early anymore. After a while, the accumulated penalty will be reduced again, so that if there is another offense, only a minor penalty will apply. This is meant to protect players who only occasionally have an unjustified disconnect.
Ranks in Dead by Daylight are not an indicator of skill, say the developers.
What about group players? Players who play in a group cannot sign up for a new game if one of the players is under a penalty. The whole group must either wait for the penalty to expire or the player responsible for the penalty must leave the group.
Complaints about these penalties cannot be filed, by the way. Support will not deal with such requests – they must be served in every case.
Do you find these new penalties good? Or is it too harsh and should there be exceptions?
To avoid disconnecting more, you should take these perks with you:
