The community of Dead by Daylight is shaken by a hacker problem. Even the calmest streamers can no longer tolerate it.
Cheaters, hackers, and fraudsters are a problem in every online game, and Dead by Daylight is no exception. Meanwhile, the issues have escalated to the point where even the biggest streamers are losing interest.
They live in constant fear of stream snipers and hackers who rob them of their enjoyment of the game and just want attention. Even the “good vibes streamer” Otzdarva is no longer having fun.
Who is Otzdarva? The streamer Otzdarva, sometimes also called “Not_Otzdarva”, has been playing Dead by Daylight for over 4 years now. He has become the most popular streamer in this game, which is not only due to his modest nature but also to his extremely high understanding of the game.
Whether a newbie or a veteran, anyone interested in Dead by Daylight will sooner or later come across his guides, in which he analyzes the pros and cons of killers, perks, and maps. His streams are particularly educational, as he plays very strategically, always explains his thoughts, and almost always analyses his own mistakes immediately and understandably.
In the Dead by Daylight community, he is considered a competent “feel-good streamer” who one can watch for hours, also to learn more about the game.
On Twitch, he has over 800,000 followers and on YouTube, he has the same amount again – making him one of the largest streamers focusing on Dead by Daylight ever.
Why is he no longer having fun? The reason is quite simple: stream snipers and hackers who ruin his enjoyment. Whenever he streams Dead by Daylight, Otzdarva now feels that stream snipers are lurking for him.
Cheaters love the attention they get by stream sniping my streams – and others’. And they do it continuously. It’s very, very annoying. Because now I have to avoid every player that seems even slightly suspicious. Private [Steam] profile? I avoid you. Anonymous mode? I avoid you. I’ve seen you before and your name has stuck in my memory? I avoid you.
This is really no fun.
The problem here is also that Otzdarva is a very ambitious person and often seeks challenges for exciting content. He has a series of “50 Win Streak” videos in which he wants to achieve 50 consecutive victories with a killer. That alone is already quite hard, but it has been repeatedly thwarted lately by stream snipers and hackers.
Why is cheating in Dead by Daylight so problematic? While cheaters (or rather “hackers”) in other games are often relatively easy to spot, that is not always the case in Dead by Daylight. While there are also the “obvious” cheaters who fly over the map or repair generators in a matter of seconds, many fraudsters work far more subtly.
They, for example, have a slightly increased movement speed of 2% – 6%. This is hardly noticeable in normal gameplay but allows them to loop the killer around objects much longer than would normally be possible. Other hackers can see the killer permanently through solid walls and therefore basically win every “mind game”.
If fraudsters handle it somewhat skillfully, it is very difficult to identify them. Otzdarva says about this:
Probably even worse than these obvious fraudsters are those who do it discreetly. Discreet fraudsters are these: maybe they see you through walls, maybe they move 2% faster, but they don’t make it obvious.
This is also because the killer player is anyway busy with many things at the same time. They have to pressure four other players simultaneously, guard the generators, and plan chases ahead. There often isn’t even time to keep an eye on all survivors and uncover cheating.
Because in the chaos, it often doesn’t go unnoticed when a generator is simply finished being repaired by hacking after just 5 seconds when you are pursuing a survivor on the other side of the map.
The YouTuber SupaAlf experienced such a hacker in one of his videos, who is ultimately only caught because he simply escapes from the game in the middle of a match, where he was supposed to die:
Only upon closer inspection of the video does it become apparent that generators are being completed far too quickly – and even then, other professionals (like Otzdarva) don’t immediately realize who the cheater is. It only becomes clear with an obvious cheat, like the spontaneous escape from the game.
Hackers want attention and influence
But even the obvious hackers are a problem. If a survivor can fly through the map, they can take the game “hostage”. For the killer, there is no “give up” option, so a hacker can block the game for up to 2 hours before the match automatically ends.
If the streamer does not want to wait that long, they have to leave the game early – and then serve an increasingly lengthy penalty. Because anyone who leaves a game early will receive an account penalty and cannot play again immediately.
This gives such hackers additional power and influence: Either they hold up the stream for almost 2 hours or they ensure that the account penalties of the streamer increase. A “win-win situation” for hackers, while streamers despair.
Does Dead by Daylight have a hacker problem? This is generally difficult to answer. For large streamers, the issue is likely more severe, as many have made it their goal to target these streamers with stream sniping and hacks to harass them for attention and thus affirmation.
Additionally, Dead by Daylight has a large number of perks that give survivors or the killer additional powers. Therefore, many cheats can often still be derived as “clever use of perks” and are not immediately viewed with skepticism.
However, Dead by Daylight is also repeatedly criticized for having rather lax protection systems against cheating. Particularly “Easy Anti-Cheat” is often laughed off and seems easy to bypass.
Otzdarva hopes that the developers will finally take the fight against hackers seriously and introduce better methods to expose or directly remove such fraudsters from the game.
Because by now, Otzdarva has reached a point where he also suspects innocent players simply because they happen to be lucky. Whenever something “slightly strange” happens, he becomes skeptical – often rightly so, but he also suspects the innocent. It’s just a kind of “hacker paranoia” that has developed in recent months and is robbing one of the game’s biggest fans of joy.
Because we know that there are so many cheaters … if I experience anything that is even a little bit strange … I just don’t believe it anymore. I stop chasing survivors because I think they are cheating. I record my games, watch them again afterwards, and analyze them closely because things just don’t look right anymore. […]
And then there are also people who are not cheaters. They just have luck or something crazy happens, but I immediately think they are cheaters – that’s not fair either.
Otzdarva is particularly disappointed that the developers, Behaviour, have not made any statements on this topic. He sees no improvement on the horizon and apologizes to his community – he loves the game, but currently, he simply has no fun with it until the cheater problem is resolved.
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