Did I just encounter a hacker or the worst luck I've ever had

That's still 5 hackers too many.

Yeah, idk about what happened to you, but I had a killer tonight that I'm pretty sure lag-switched me. We were at the end, last gen pops, match ping was flawless for all parties throughout, when suddenly, pig starts chasing me. She then just starts running past me, and about 5 seconds later, I am suddenly downed. Team mate dies to the trap, she hooks me, and immediately winds up at the hatch. But I doubt anything will be done about it, since BHVR only punishes people if they have video evidence, which has to be submitted through the forums. Idk why they even bother adding an in-game reporting system, when they tell you they won't act on it unless you report them on the forums.

It's seriously like they just said "Hey, let's make a slasher game" and then just blindly pushed forward with it. No actual plan on how their systems would work, or how they would balance things. Just kind of do things as they go. A reporting system is obvious, but let's not enable our in-game reporting system to actually function because we need users to submit evidence on the forums in a totally separate report, rendering the in-game report totally moot, since we can't really act on an in-game report alone.

Mis-spoke. The point is that the in-game reporting system doesn't actually do anything. If you want to fill out a report, you have to do it outside of the game. So why bother incorporating an in-game reporting system, except to make the game appear more finished? That, or it's designed so that people will be deceived into thinking their reports were actually submitted so BHVR doesn't actually have to address them. It's just time wasted by the team that should instead be focusing on fixing bugs.

I would hope so, but I wish they'd go the PUBG route, and allow people to save clips to submit in post-game. It shouldn't take an external forum (forum as in entity) to handle reports that could be done and dealt with all in game. I don't see many other titles that require you to both submit a report in the game, and then go elsewhere to followup, just to get the process started. Most of them can also go back and review their own footage to verify the accusations. It's not like BHVR is a small company, but they way this game seems to be on most days (not just talking their reporting system) would have many believe that they are a small group of maybe 10-12 people.

600 employees, last reported as of 2020, and just recently, they stated they added (I believe) 500 new employees. That's a lot of people. I can point to other entities, such as Thatgamecompany (12 employees), who manage to put out and consistently update titles like Sky: Children of the Light. PUBG has about 60 people who work on it. I know BHVR also works on other titles, but DBD is fairly limited in scope, compared to the above mentioned. The objectives are pretty straight-forward, there aren't that many maps (even with the variations), there are a select number of characters and perks. Many basic mobile titles rival the scope of this game. That's fine, but the point is that it shouldn't take an army to be able to hash out the bugs and systems in this game. Even looking the list of other titles that BHVR helps co-develop, it isn't very large. Keep in mind I've also said co-develop, meaning they are working with much larger companies on these other projects, many of them standard mobile titles you see floating around (such as Game of Thrones for mobile, etc). It's not like they're soloing all these projects. At the end of the day, with the sheer number of employees they have, there's no reason they can't have a decent focus on their own titles, particularly when they're legit sitting on a market gold mine with Dead by Daylight. This should be their priority, less someone else come up and take control of that market.

I've got ~300 hours and I've encountered a hacker (who admitted to hacking even) so maybe there are more hackers at lower ranks who get banned before reaching red ranks (assuming based on your playtime that you are rank 1)

No unbreakable and she got up twice alone that game and the first time she was slugged in the basement and the other 3 was wounded and I was chasing a guy looping the shack with the basement and at endgame I had no hex perks active killed one slugged a Claudette drove out a flashlight Feng and slugged Cheryl again nowhere near the gate and then hooked Claudette near gate and Cheryl gets back up and lo and behold I just realized the Claudette used DS on me twice that game