http://dbd.game/killswitch
PSA: Stop Witchhunting Developers
DBD has a lot of developer quotes that they put into the loading screens, they've done this almost every single year and it's a fine and cute thing to do.
But a developer put "I dont like Skull Merchant either lol" as a joke, and now they are being harassed over it. Ive seen a massive witchhunting campaign against this single person, who mind you, is a VFX Artist, and probably had no say in the balance of Skull Merchant's power.
So far I have seen:
- DOX threats.
- Death threats.
- Attacking their personal appearance.
- Calling for them to be "removed from their job".
- Attacking their family.
All over a single joke quote in a loading screen that you can ignore half the time; and they have had to private all their social media accounts, because the harassment was getting that bad.
Nobody deserves to be harassed and attacked like that, but the fact that people are willing to do this over a LITERAL game is genuinely sad and pathetic to see. On top of that, people are risking their account to do this, because attacking and harassing developers like this IS a bannable offense.
To the VFX Artist being harassed because of all of this, I do hope you are doing well.
(All names have been censored to decrease the likelihood of any parties involved being harassed.)
Comments
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This is why you avoid twitter folks. Trust me youll be a lot happier.
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It was not just Twitter unfortunately, Ive seen it happening across multiple social media.
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Skull Merchant mains only proving the stereotypes lmao
At least the developer messages aren't all gross like they were after Trickster dropped.
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point still stands lol
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That is sickening. What the heck
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This is actually disgusting behavior, giving death threats to people over a joke is beyond ridiculous.
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I was upset about the skullmerchant massacre too but... death threats over a loading screen joke is hella too far. This is why the DBD community has such a stereotype of being toxic.
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social media broadcasts every intrusive thought that in medieval times, we'd just keep in our head and forget about it. it's honestly a mind virus.
even just talking about social media legitimatizes it when it should be disregarded as the joke that it is. the human monkey brain is not capable of handling social media. there's a reason it's considered a drug.
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Genuinely aggravating that people can't just chill and realize this is a videogame. Tracking somebody down just to send trash to them because you don't like a loading screen tip is exactly why the devs keep a ten foot pole between them and the community.
When every attempt to be unserious and have fun is demonized and met with vitriol, why are these same players complaining that they don't feel as passionate about the game anymore?
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Yikes. That's truly disappointing. Am I surprised? Sadly, no. If this is true, I'm sad to be considered part of a community that would do such a nasty thing. It's a joke, even if he/she doesn't like skully, the comment was meant in jest. Grow up and stop trying to ruin someone's life over a video game.
As a peace offering, let's just delete skully from the game.
I was kidding! It was just a joke!
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@bhvr #deletetheforums 📢
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The Twitter crowd treat Skull Merchant as if she was a real person and not a fictional video game character. It displays a frankly very concerning depiction of their mental state, that they would take a small joke as a genuine slight and respond with actual attacks on a real person.
To be expected of Twitter I'm afraid. Not that most other platforms are much better, but…
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Imagine getting that upset over someone simply showing good taste.
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🤣
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@Superyoshiegg Idk if I'll get a slap on the wrist for it, but it's a starts-with-S-rhymes-with-Tex thing. Not that her creators are much better given what you find in her room on her map, but yknow.
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This isn't surprising; this community is awful, to be honest. Who cares if they might not like SM and made a joke about it? I’d say the majority of people dislike her, lol.
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What's hilarious is this isn't even the first time a dev made this kind of joke
Last year or the year before, one of the dev quotes was
"I guess we can say this time "we did a pretty good job so far" and it was accompanied with a picture of Skull Merchant.
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Attacking them personally like that is wrong but remember people paid money for this character. I'm sure it's pretty annoying having the dev team laugh about how they butchered the character to deliberately make them basically unplayable
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Except no "team" or dev even said that. A sole, visual effects artist (so not responsible for any of SMs changes) said she dislikes SM.
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If a Dev said I like Ghoul as a quote I know all the people in these forums would do the exact same thing twitter people did
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You are free to like or not like whatever you want but keep it off the loading screens or give us the option to turn off dev comments.
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Witch hunts are bad but so is making us vs them comments and putting them in the loading screens.
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An us vs them statement is something like "killer players always say x" or "survivor players or always act Y" because it lumps an entire group into an opinion or playstyle when in reality, players think and act all sorts of ways.
A dev saying they dislike SM doesn't pit survivors against her, it's just a vfx artist saying they don't like her.
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In the context of how SM was butchered and how the community harassed SM players with slurs and death threats all the same - it comes across as Us vs Them to me. If not us vs them then it is 100% tone deaf and still doesn't belong in the game.
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Those who harass and threaten anybody, just because of some simple comment, are quite simply fecal matter. Cowards who wouldn't say "boo" to a goose if face-to-face.
If the best thing in life they've got to do is threaten somebody over something so trivial, it's no wonder humanity is falling into the void.
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I had no idea this was happening. What a sad bunch of bullies. I hope the VFX artist is okay and not letting it get to them.
The internet is simultaneously a great place and an awful place
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Comments like this are part of the problem. You are just making up stuff that wasn't done or said by anybody. A dev saying he doesn't like the Skull Merchant is not "laughing" at anybody, and this whole idea that the devs nerfed Skull Merchant "to deliberately make her unplayable" is based on some baseless conspiracy theory that claims the devs said that themselves, when they never did.
Am I saying no comment from a dev should never be criticized? No, but one thing is valid criticism, the other is enabling hoaxes and misquotes, SPECIALLY when trying to somehow make the problem about that on a thread about the dev in question receiving death threats.
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There was a different thread, but it got merged with this one. This is the only place you can talk about this topic on the forums.
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Damn. Hope they’re alright.
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Of course harassment is terrible and I hope the people who did that get their accounts suspended.
That doesn't mean that quote was okay tho. I am pretty confident if a dev said "I don't like Survivor lol" they would not let this quote into the game. And if they did it would like cause even more outrage. It genuinely seems to me like the Devs want people to hate Skull Merchant more so they can justify turning her into a completely different character.
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Huge stretch on your part. What your comment is implying is that, since some people were toxic towards Skull Merchant players, than anyone who says they don't like Skull Merchant are taking a side among the toxic people and against Skull Merchant players. If a comment here sounds like Us vs Them, it is yours. Not liking a character in a video game is on anyone's right and has nothing to do with having something against people who play them.
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You are comparing "I don't like [character]" to an hypotetical "I don't like [role]". A better comparison would be a dev saying "I don't like Sable, lol", and there would be nothing wrong with that.
And again, it's the anniversary event, with personal comments from devs in the loading screen for fun, not comments made to represent the devs as a whole. It's kind of ridiculous to assume it is not okay for someone who doesn't even work on balance changes to personally say they don't like a character in a video game.
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Poor person.
The fact that they are a VFX artist and NOT a dev, makes this even more twisted, since the people are literally bullying someone who had no say in skull merchant's fate for just saying their opinion.
And, we don't even know what context this quote has. They might just dislike her look for all we know.
Looks like people forgot that BHVR employees are people with opinions too.
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Survivors are all just reskins of one another with no intrinsic abilities. Saying you hate a certain Survivor just says you hate a certain set of skins. Killers meanwhile have unique powers. There is a reason on one account all Killers have linked but separate MMR, meanwhile Survivor has the same MMR matter which one you play.
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Except they did purposefully make changes to gut her to bandaid a "problem" with the plan to rework her.
Define "gut her". She got nerfed because her kit was problematic as shown by both feedback from the community AND stats, so they had to do something to mitigate the problem until she got a full rework. The other person here was claiming they "they butchered the character to deliberately make them basically unplayable", which is not true. One thing is to nerf a killer, the other is to deliberately make them unplayable, something that she is not. He also talked as if the dev was laughing at someone's expense. No, they did not talk about a real person or players, they talked about a fictional character in a video game.
for a member of the team to both make and also plaster on a loading screen after all the issues surrounding the topic
The issue being mainly about a character being too unbalanced on a video game and then getting nerfed. Nothing nowhere near as serious as some of you are acting as it was. And if you somehow was talking about toxicity among players, again, voicing a brief opinion about a VIDEO GAME CHARACTER has nothing to do with an attack against its players.
It does come off in a negative light to killers, especially those who enjoyed Skull Merchant
Only if we are assuming killer mains in general liked skull merchant and were against her nerf. Not really the case. The complaints about Skull Merchant didn't come only from "survivor mains", lots of people play both roles, you know?
and just gives all the toxic players who had irrational hate for the character a sense of being justified in their excessive toxic whining and ability to cry until things get nerfed into the ground
You are talking about "irrational hate" (for a CHARACTER, mind you. Not a real person), "toxic whining" and people "crying", but you are the one here using disrespectful language over a character that got nerfed nine months ago. At least one of the reasons people didn't like Skull Merchant was very rational, she was unfun to play against, that's it, no one is enabling some toxic crowd just because they say they didn't like (and I will say that again) a FICTIONAL CHARACTER in a VIDEO GAME. It is a character designed by the devs themselves and you are acting as if disliking it somehow should be taken as an attack against players.
Post edited by Malkhrim on0 -
And? Comparing not liking a killer to not liking a role is still not the same thing. Sable is a CHARACTER in the game, just like the CHARACTER the dev said they didn't like. Nothing crazy about that. Saying "I don't like survivors lol" would only be comparable to saying "I don't like killers lol", not to disliking a specific character.
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Comparing one killer to one role is a way better comparation to comparing one killer to what is essentially a set of skins.
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- In theory, in any democratic country, you can express an opinion without fearing for your life. It is clear that this is pure madness/fascism. And it is clear that this person, says what 99% of DBD players think. (I'm kidding, don't attack me)🤣
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If that was the case, the devs would even announce each new chapter with a new killer and a new skin, instead of one new character for each side. Even though their gameplay doesn't change, survivors are still separate characters, and the dev never said they didn't like the Skull Merchant's playstile, they said they didn't like Skull Merchant herself, the character. He could be talking about either the gameplay or even how she looks, because that's a reason that could lead to not liking something too, and it would totally apply to Sable.
Again, Sable is a CHARACTER, survivor is a ROLE, Skull Merchant is a CHARACTER. Not liking a character is comparable to not liking another character, not to disliking an entire role.
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How dare you! I hope you step in a puddle and your socks get wet!
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Spot on. I was in Hens chat when the comments were made (by a community dev, who also has nothing to do with killer change decisions and probably little to no insight into why the decisions are made in the first place), and someone took ONE comment and made it into something it wasn't. Probably one of the same people harassing this artist now. Some gamers aren't well.
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Least toxic Twitter SM mains.
I swear it's like a cult or something with how vehemently they defend her.
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😁 sorry!
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Thanks for the support in this thread everyone, it's heartwarming. I will close it here, as I don't want this to devolve into something else entirely! <3
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