When Marketing Drives Game Design: DbD's Absolute State
BHVR's decision to replace Strahd with Vecna might seem like a minor change, but it actually highlights everything wrong with how Dead by Daylight is being managed.
Their reasoning was straightforward enough: they didn't want two vampire characters back-to-back with Castlevania coming right after. Fair point on paper. But step back and look at the bigger picture – this perfectly captures how the game operates now. Marketing schedules matter more than actual game design.
Here's the thing about vampires: they're horror 101. Players have been asking for them forever. BHVR finally had Strahd ready to go, then pulled him – not because of gameplay concerns, but because it didn't fit their content calendar.Now, does that sound like creative direction to you, or something more…corporate?
This isn't an isolated incident either. It's part of a clear pattern:
Band-aid solutions instead of real fixes. Rather than addressing camping and tunneling directly, we keep getting new perks (Decisive Strike, Off the Record, Reassurance, Shoulder the Burden) that just make balancing harder. Meanwhile, Identity V figured out how to build anti-camping mechanics right into the core game. Dead by Daylight never learned from that.
Endless cosmetics while core issues rot. New skins drop every week, but we're still dealing with the same map problems, matchmaking issues, and bugs that have existed for years. Some of these aren't just annoying – there are actual security problems that put players at risk.
Ignoring everyone who actually knows the game. Safety Depips, a former BHVR developer with over 10,000 hours played, left a scathing Steam review calling out management for being completely out of touch. They talked about how leadership prioritizes quarterly numbers over everything else, even going as far as banning employees' personal accounts and refusing to fix an IP leak that could expose players to doxxing. That review went up in 2022. Here we are in 2025, and nothing's changed.
Complete loss of identity. Dead by Daylight started as a horror anthology. Now it feels like a content mill – endless perks, shifting metas, and licensed characters while basic horror archetypes like vampires and werewolves get shelved because they don't fit the marketing timeline.
The frustrating part? BHVR can completely overhaul systems when they want to. Dead by Daylight Mobile rebuilt entire mechanics. Identity V proves you can balance camping and tunneling through smart design. Other asymmetrical games continue evolving. But the main DbD game just slaps another perk on every problem and releases another skin.
Before anyone says:
"But Vecna's actually pretty cool." That's missing the point entirely. The problem is that BHVR had to choose between giving players what they've wanted for years and sticking to their marketing plan – and marketing won.
"They can add vampires later." Timing matters though. Swapping out Strahd to "save" Dracula for some future roadmap isn't vision, it's corporate planning. It'd be like making a zombie game but waiting ten years to add zombies because it "fits better with the schedule."
"Player numbers are still solid." World of Warcraft had great numbers during some of its worst design periods too. High player counts don't excuse poor design philosophy – they just delay the inevitable problems.
"You're making too big a deal of this." Go read Safety Depips' full review. Check out the Glassdoor reviews from other former employees. When people who actually worked on the game and dedicated players are all saying the same things about BHVR ignoring both player feedback and employee concerns, maybe it's worth taking seriously.
Here's the uncomfortable reality: Dead by Daylight didn't start struggling because players changed their minds about what they wanted. It's struggling because BHVR lost track of what made the game special in the first place.
The horror atmosphere got traded for licensed crossover appeal. Meaningful gameplay fixes got replaced with perk solutions that create new problems. Player enthusiasm got buried under an endless content treadmill.
The Strahd situation isn't just one questionable decision. It's the same thinking that led to perk bloat, ignored security issues, constant cosmetic drops, and surface-level "improvements" instead of addressing fundamental problems.
Until BHVR starts learning from their own mobile version – and from competitors who've already solved these issues – it won't matter how many new killers or skins they release. The foundation will keep getting shakier.