DbD feels like a free-to-play game.

It's just a matter of time before we get lootboxes.

Coming soon: Perk system rework!

Now with 100% more Gacha! What exciting perks will you get? Tier 1 Deja Vu, Tier 1 No One Left Behind, Tier 1 Calm Spirit (but only if you bought the Doctor, until then it remains locked) - BUT WAIT! Every Entity Orb™ guarantees one perk of Tier 2 or higher! You also get a TIER 2 Thrill Of The Hunt! Amazing!

Entity Orb™ now available for only $1.99!

That's not adding any input buddy, as players we're customers at the same time. We can criticize as much as we want but ultimately it's the developers decision on what they want to implement. Sure you can go ahead and vote with your wallet since they could be just keeping count of the amount of money they're getting, but not all of the staff would be like this. As for the gaming feeling free2play I also had this in mind the very first time I played, I wondered how this felt like a mobile game that you could play for an hour or two and then move on to a different game or do what you have to.

Going by the playerbase, they probably could add other fun gamemodes such as "kill with your friends" but they can't due to the amount of players the playerbase has for this game at the moment, but that's my theory. I have used other graphs before but the peak players this game tends to have now is about 54k players. From march all the way to july of 2020 there seemed to be a gain in players but that was most likely due to new DLC and cosmetics. These are steam charts btw, this may not be including console players in this graph.

9000 shards per character ain’t cheap for a paid game

I mean people pay 20 bucks for this game if not on sale, if they have to grind 500-1000 hours just to start unlocking all the non dlc characters, then that's just demotivating.

So if the game were f2p, everyone would call it a cliche move, but don't you agree that some aspects of this game feels like it were to be f2p? Like don't say this game doesn't have alot of similarities with like any free game like: Warframe, trove, path of exile, runescape.. "Want to progress faster? BUY THIS STUFF FOR REAL MONEY! THIS GAME WAS FREE ANYWAYS!" Dead By Daylight: "Want to progress faster? Buy these characters for money so you don't have to grind shards that take you ages to get, but even then the BP grind is still inevitable! This game costs 20 bucks btw!"

Looking at it, it almost feels worse than a f2p game, because the grind is just inevitable, and unnessecary for some people if they're there to just play a build, but can't because the killer needs to get like 150 levels because they can't get the perk they want. A big part of the community agrees that the bloodweb grind is just getting worse looking at how many perks there are being added, and lots of em you don't even care about, which makes the grind almost pointless.

So this doesn't mean EVERY grindy game is free, like look at WoW, you g r i n d, and grind and grind.. that's normal it's an mmorpg and still costs money. But why do people not complain alot about the grind like in DbD? Because the grind actually feels like an accomplishment at the end. You feel like you actually gained something out of it. And it makes grinding (usually) easier and easier.

But in DbD? It's like I said, grind and grind, but lots of people don't feel like they gained something.. (This is where perk balancing is an issue, you know to "not change the meta bla bla bla", those excuses). (Let's not even start about prestige)

And the rift? I mean the battle pass. Obvious.

And the skins that cost 10 bucks per... or skins that cost the double of the character itself. Perhaps they need to add lootboxes for shards to get skin parts.. oh wait- that sounds like a typicale thing of a different type of genre of a game. Hmm.

So yes, it is technically a "them" problem, but it's a bit stupid if they paid for a game and still have to grind for ages to unlock the other half of it, not even including the licensed dlcs (Which is understandable, still they are a big part of the game, they could atleast give us free auric cells in the rift for alot of grind that can make it worth it, but instead we get a few cosmetics, which is cool, but a bit disappointing, I'd rather have auric cells instead of some of those skins..)

Sure you don't have buy DLC, sure you can grind for 20 hours to get enough shards for ONE non-licensed character, sure you don't have to buy skins, sure you don't have buy into the DBD currency, sure you don't have to purchase the battle passes...do you see where I'm going with this?

Simply saying that a consumer doesn't have to do anything, doesn't solve the problem at hand. DBD mirrors a free to play mobile game more than ever before. Just look at the choices BHVR made in 2020: instead of having a proper Halloween event with its own currency, BHVR decided to sell us a battle pass. Instead of a double blood point event during the last week of December, they decided to give us daily login bonuses for the month of December. Which sounds nice on paper, until you realize that an entire week's worth of login bonuses can be gained by simply playing one Killer match.

And bear in mind, this is all attached to a game that you have to purchase money for. The Silent Hill dead by daylight edition alone is $50. Imagine spending that much money and then finding all of these free to play mechanics in a game you just purchased full price for.

If none of this puts you off then more power to you, but most of the DBD community doesn't feel that way.

I agree with @stargazer9 right here.

Criticism ≠ whining

We need more people criticizing BHVR for their bussiness practices

I've felt this way ever since they introduced battle passes. That ######### doesn't belong in paid games, they already have cosmetics and paid DLC. That's not even getting into the fact that challenges cause you and others to play in ways that detract from the overall experience.