Is wiki correct about BHVR?
"The company boasts more than 850 employees at its studio in Montreal, Canada."
That cant be right? Eight HUNDRED and fifty PLUS?!
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Bhvr is one of the biggest game dev studios in Canada pretty sure that's accurate
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Hook and Generator skins don't just grow on trees ya know
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Thats an absolutely gigantic team, thats not just one of the biggest in canada, thats one of the biggest in the world. Especially considering theyre indy. The wages alone must cost them a fortune, DBD must pull in tonnes of cash.
Just to put that into perspective
Naughty Dog has 569 Employees - create some of the best games ever
Santa Monica has around 250 - best game ever made
Insomniac has around 400 - they put out spiderman and ratchet and clank within a year apart, both amazing games
Sucker punch has 160 - Ghost of Tsushima
Guerrilla Games - 360 - horizon + probably working on killzone
343 Industries - 450 - halo
Polyphony Digital - 170 - they make hundreds of photo realistic cars
Playground Games around 200 - forza
Its CRAZY
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Yeah I'm pretty sure they suffer from severe operational bloat. You can't just throw people at something and expect it to be done. You have to have an effective organizational structure.
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Straight off their website oh also
They bring in about 120-125 mill a year according to the stats
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I cant believe the number is actually real. I agree 100%
Id love to see what they actually do? Lets say 50 are managers ( which would be insane ), what - 400 on the game, 400 on cosmetics?
Man its a ridiculously big team. They literally have enough people to put out a AAA game every 3 years.
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What the heck do they do then? Thats such a big team. They could literally have 100 people working on small fixes.
Knowing this now, now boggles my mind why things take so long to fix. You could literally put 100x people on small bug fixes, and youve still got over 700 people free ?!
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Somehow I doubt that all 850+ are working on Dead by Daylight. They're both a developer and publisher, meaning they probably work on all sorts of external projects that we're not privy to.
Their Wikipedia page name drops seven different games they've worked on since DBD released (one of them being Deathgarden). Of course, they're mainly ports and mobile games, but still.
If you think 850+ is ridiculously big, you should take a look at Square Enix (5,500+), Nintendo (6,500+), Activision-Blizzard (9,500+), EA (11,000+) and Ubisoft (**19,000+**).
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850 is ridiculously big for them, lets be honest theyre 90% DBD. I dont buy a mobile game, and one other failed dbd clone game as the reason for this bloat. Id love to know the split, I doubt many of these people are working on other games.
The rest of your examples arent as shocking, since all of those put out heaps of games, the ubisoft one is surprising though. But even then you have assassins creed, siege, far cry, watch dogs, for honor, tom clancy, just dance ect
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It took 850 people 2 years to implement the most basic MMR system imaginable? How is it even possible? By the productivity of BHVR I was sure it was no more than 50, what do other 800 even do there?
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exactly, its making me question everything now.
Even if half are only working on dbd which is unlikely, thats still a huge team.
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They crank out regular killers and maps (reworks), to be fair. That is likely what the bulk of employees are working on in one way or another. I mean, it is more content than I am used to in most of the games I play that aren't gacha, realistically. I guess it is kind of sad when I put it that way...
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I’m pretty sure that that all don’t work on dbd, there are proberly people who have normal Office jobs, cantine jobs maybe other games … , ect… i would say that at least 400 of them doesn’t work on dbd
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im honestly shocked, i didnt think theyd have more than 100 employees due to how slow they are to acknowledge and fix problems, id like to know how many people work in each section of the game/company now
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What confuses is why they haven't announced a new project. They have 850+ people, there's no way even half those people are working on DBD.
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They have tried other projects its just they have all crashed and burned very quickly such as Death's Garden.
DbD is effectively their only successful title.
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The operational scope of those companies is drastically larger, though.
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Do realise that do a lot, and i mean a lot of outsourcing to other games.
There is a list on that very website. And it hasn't been updated in forever so it's probably much bigger
The DbD team is much much smaller portion of BHVR
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quantity does not represent quality
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You might be better off referring to the staff credits for an actual number of people working on DbD. A company's numbers doesn't really mean much.
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It seems to me that it will be good if at least 50-100 people work on DBD)
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BHVR isn't just a game development company, but also a publishing company. There goes some of the staff.
In the game development segment, they work on their own original content outside of DBD (confirmed through job listings a while ago), and they outsource a lot of other work. There goes about half the staff if not more.
Of the remaining ~425, being generous here, there's also janitorial staff and catering staff, since they hire chefs to make hot meals for their employees whenever they're in-office (confirmed from their website and sources talking about their time being employed). There goes another 30-50.
So that leaves about 350 people to work on DBD, and that's with me being generous with my guessing.
Of those 350 people, a lot work on new content. The design team needs to create powers and perks, the art team need to make concept art and then model it in game, the programmers need to code them into the game, etc. Not to mention half of that number works exclusively on The Realm Beyond content- or has done for a while, anyway; with the release of RPD and Eyerie I'm not sure if they work exclusively on it anymore. So we have about 100 people left, and we still need to split the work into legal, marketing, and then the balance team and design team for older content (like reworks) - there really aren't that many because of how the company is structured.
I've said it before and I'll say it again- BHVR is an example of how a company should be run. Employees are salaried rather than on wages, crunch and overtime in general isn't mandatory, and they've been consistently rated as one of the best employers to work for in Canada full stop, not just one of the best game studios to work for.
Unfortunately, a decade of studios with mandatory crunch, terrible working conditions, and overall labour exploitation has lead us (the consumers) to expect a much higher product than is reasonably possible with this amount of x-inefficiency in a company.
BHVR makes their employees live comfortably, and in return the product suffers in quality.
(this isn't me trying to kiss the devs' ass, because good god does something need to change and they need to kick themselves into high gear at some point, but that's an overall explanation as to why "850 employees" isn't as big as you'd think)
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puts the amount of content they put out and how many bugs bugs they have into some perspective huh
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Development must be a logistical nightmare
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This company to me is just milking the current cash flow with the occasional crumb update thrown in.. Let's say you have 10 employees who are mediocre at best and there sole job is to just play killer and survivor to find out if nerfs or buffs are needed, that's 1600 hours a month dedicated to actual game play and they come up with nerfing toy sword and marvins blood the only two add ons that make twins and nemesis worth playing but at the same time give COH a slap on the wrist? pshhh
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Yes but BHVR doesnt only develope DBD.
For DBD directly, theres waaaay less employees
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So like 200?
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They must be including Security, Janitorial, Cafeteria, & Human Resources staff in that number. No way they have 850 devs working on this one game and it’s in the current state it’s in.
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I would like to point out that a lot of those studios work with other studios that are owned by Sony, mainly outsourcing portions of the product. Nothing wrong with that but simply going off of their employee numbers is not getting the full picture. In fact, every name on that list has subcontracted portions of their work out to other companies.
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You also forgot to mention that they collaborate with NetEase since 2020. This is the year when the quality of the game went down and more P2W was added to the game. Guess what? This is actually exactly what NetEase is known for. They are ripping off their customers (far beyond from good and evil) and then shutdown games. There’s at least one person from them on the board as well who has some value. And now this pest is in this game too.
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tbh i think its probably even less.
I try if i find something
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from what i found now its like 100.
And most of them are on the art team (skins and designs)
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Where is the P2W in dbd?
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Outfits obviously. And DBDM as an entire game.
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Now DBDMobile I can get behind, but I believe that was only for the Mobile version? I didn't think NetEase had much sway over DBDMain?
Also, how are outfits P2W? Unless it's a game of "who looks the best" in which case understandable, or a game of "I'm being sarcastic" in which case I'm sorry.
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Every DLC and Outfit is a P2W content. And yup, many person takes that serious about outfits or do you see a lot of standard skins playing this game? It’s just super sus that the game went down, after NetEase joined the party. :) Could be a fluke, or maybe even more.
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I wouldn't say P2W when we look at the killers that are the best. Nurse is free, Blight can be unlocked with Shards, Spirit is free on Switch and otherwise can be unlocked with shards, and Hag is free on consoles and otherwise can be unlocked with shards. David is free, as is Meg, and Jake, and Bill. The meta are all free or shard unlocks.
Perks you may have a case for, but again the best perks (ie. Ruin, Undying, Pop, Tinkerer, Pain Resonance) are also all on Shard characters- I think for killers BBQ is the only non-free-or-grindeable meta perk. For survivors, it's just really DS and COH that are locked, but again Mikaela is a shard unlock so it's just DS.
I really wouldn't say it's Pay 2 Win, when the best content can all be unlocked for free.
(though the grind really could do with being toned down)
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Yea the grind is horrible. They’ve added the shards option - totally forgot that cause I always use auric cells. ^^
Still tho, considering that micro transactions exists makes it P2W. I personally don’t care to spend in the game, the prices are reasonable. On a pure NetEase game an outfit costs like 200€. I’m just a burned child of NetEase who got screwed after 3 yrs of playing and spending some k €s on that game. And so I just want to warn ppl cause of NetEase. :)
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DBD should just sit back and take notes on how Siege does things...
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850 employees and didn't they say the balance team consisted of 2 people?
TWO people, balancing asymmetrical horror themed action game, Dead By Daylight.
And we complain it isn't balanced.
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I'd say it's legit tbh.
1 person to hold the lightbulb while the other 849 turn the building.
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So, you do understand that they dont just have one game to work for?
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Such a poor small indie company 😥
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