It's really been a rough year for DbD, huh?

Binding of Kin being the single buggiest patch DbD has ever seen (since I've started playing, anyway)

Stranger Things leaving

The hacker uprising which has gone wholly unaddressed

The RE chapter also being one of the buggiest chapters yet, of which the performance issues have yet to be ironed out

Performance in general

MMR/SBMM that has many players wondering what the point of playing even is

I truly didn't expect myself to say this, but you really need to get your act together, BHVR. I can excuse any of these (minus the hacker thing) individually, but all of it, so close to each other?

Stranger Things leaving wasn't your call, I'll give you that. On its own, we'd have accepted it and moved on. Losing the map is a shame, but, again, not your call.

Binding of Kin was not licensed. Corona being the possible reason for this debacle aside, this really should not have shipped the way it did. RE had the excuse of being a licensed chapter with a not-so-insignifcant party behind it for pushing its release. BoK did not. It was around Christmas, and with that comes little time in the office. Understandable. What is not understandable is how the chapter didn't get delayed way further. The killer was straight-up unfinished. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and bought the chapter, expecting you to fix the most egregious bugs, and you mostly did. Some of those bugs, like Victor clipping into the ground, soft-locking the entire match for them should never have seen the live version, period.

And then there's the hackers. You've promised an overhaul in how we can report these players. That kind of stuff takes a while to develop, I can understand that. I'm a very (sometimes too) patient guy, I can wait for this. This has been going on for years now, though. Just tell us something, anything about what you're planning on doing about this. Because if basically all of the game's associated platforms are to be believed, hackers are getting rampant thoughout. Hell, even a "we tried something, didn't work, trying something else" would do it for me. Anything.

I can't speak for the performance aspect, as my game has generally been running okay on the lowest settings. I have seen enough console players complain about the atrocious framerate, however. There was this one massive thread that I sincerely hope has been useful, but can't say for certain whether it has been. It's an "on-going process", I can understand that. On its own, this would have been excusable.

What I can speak for was how excited I was for SBMM/MMR, specifically for when I play as survivor. For the most part, my matches have been largely the same as survivor. That is to say, I still get matched with <100h players. I didn't think much of it, I am not the best survivor by a long-shot. My killer games saw a noticaeble disparity in what opponents I'd face. I'd absolutely stomp in one game, then get absolutely stomped a few games later. Then when you dropped what the actual factors influecing MMR were... To be entirely honest, the emblem system sounds way better on paper. There's absolutely no nuance in qualifying how good a survivor really was, should they be the first to die. Now, I'm not one to care about playing optimally--far from it. But I can't help but have this lingering feeling of none of my actions in-game being worth anything. If I want to be altruistic, I want to be that against an opponent against whom that actually matters. If I die, but saved another teammate, the game will verse me against an opponent in which such a scenario simply won't have the same impact it would in that first game. I'll end this rant here, 'cause I want to adress one last thing.

This whole NFT business... It came with acquiring the Hellraiser license, that much is clear. Pinhead was a much anticipated character, and I'll fully admit he's a great addition to the game. But you associating yourself with the pinnacle of capitalism that is NFT's is such a massive sell-out, in my opinion. Like with Stranger Things, this was quite possibly not your call to make. But truly, I expected you to have a stronger position, legally speaking, when it comes to this. I genuinely hope for you that Steam won't disassociate itself with you because of this. But quite frankly, I wouldn't even think you don't deserve it if they do.

This has been my extremely disjointed rant about DbD's 2021. Let's hope we survive without much else to bring us down. But then, I know a fair few of you won't even grant BHVR that luxury. Can't blame you either.