It's honestly funny watching this game die.
I mean when you're getting paired with people who have THOUSANDS more hours than you and there's nothing you can do about it, or the fact that even with being more survivors (you can tell because of the bloodpoint incentive on killers) that killer queue times are STILL garbage. Hell I could hop on survivor and be in a full lobby in seconds even though there's supposedly "less killers". Not to mention that you get paired with survivors who are leagues better than you, EVEN THOUGH there should be more for the game to pull from to make it a fair game.
What a sad. depressing. joke.
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Tell that to the loss of around 4,000 players in the last 30 days.
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Oh I don't doubt that, a player boost that'll last a few weeks then drizzle down again when people realize "Huh, this game is still garbage"
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Crappy matchmaking is a problem, but not one that has anything to do with game health or player recidivism? The game isn't picking bad matches because it doesn't have enough players spread around in various MMRs, it gives you bad matches because it prioritizes speed over accuracy and it completely falls apart when players leave their initial lobby (as their replacements are basically random.)
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This game has been dying for like...three years. This death is taking forever. I should have brought a book 😡
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You are just trapped inside your own bubble with your own assumptions.
Regardless of the games imbalances, it's not dying; not even close yet.
And in EU, incentives are for survivors the majority of the day. Perhaps you play more at night when queues are screwed anyway.
I get you lost your 4k streak against a good SWF team and you came here to vent about it but no need to exaggerate as if it's doomsday.
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Not much more to say.
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XD XD XD WHAT 4K STREAK????? I've been rocking 2 or less because every survivor I play against has over 10k hours!!! Meanwhile I'm over here on pc with no killers OR perks because I am unable to renew my PS+ atm. There's zero ######### fun to be had because BHVR is either unwilling or unable to do cross progression between systems!
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Dead by Daylight is the Hyman Roth of video games.
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I'm sure DBD will die this time
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DBD truly has been dying for 6 years now, starting to think it might get the average human life span
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I've been there too man. You will get over it. Nobody can quit dbd. Take a break, yes. Quit, never.
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The incentive is there to “balance it out” dude. There could be 1 million killers playing and they still have incentives because there isn’t 4 million survivors playing (a 1:4 ratio) but that doesn’t mean 1 million killers isn’t a lot of killers. So that’s why you get paired up fast as survivor. Since when do you get paired up with people who have the same amount of hours played with you in any game? That would be ridiculous. Imagine not being able to find games because you have too many hours compared to other people lmao.
Post edited by BoxGhost on1 -
I remember last year it took me almost 30 minutes after a certain time to find a survivor match.
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I suspect both.
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If we had 50 cents for every time someone proclaimed the game was dying we could finance our own Dbd game.
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50 cents!? Dude, we could probably get away with 5 cents and still have enough to make a better game, lol
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Omg this is the first time I heard this one before....
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Short term fluctuations don't represent long term trends.
Now there has been a general post pandemic decline, with event spikes, but that's to be expected as people aren't stuck sitting on their couches anymore.
So it's hardly sharp unexpected decline in player count.
A monthly total player count snapshot is hardly that informative so don't read to much into it.
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No need to be annoying. Let the rest of us enjoy this game while you find something else to do.
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I hope this game goes on for years honestly, it's just so fun. They did such a good job on Wesker, I hope they keep the momentum.
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What's funny about it? Nothing funny about things we love struggling.
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Shrug.
Look at the trends numbers wise over a few years. You have the massive anniversary spike, then fall-off, then another spike around Halloween, then a fall-off.
This is a game that's pretty old now. It is eventually going to peak and decline no matter what the devs do.
DbD is fine. The sky is not falling.
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Relax. It's just a game. Take a little break and come back tomorrow. Or play a different killer and focus on fun rather than winning. Winning does not make a game fun necessarily and playing for the win can be quite stressful. Maybe try a different build, think about why you actually lost. Was the game maybe rigged from the start? That can happen occasionally. Or did you make a mistake and couldn't recover? Killer queues are not as bad. They're not instant anymore but surely you can wait 1 or maybe 2 minutes.
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And then immediately lose all of it right after, which indicates people only really return for events and then the game fails to keep them hooked
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Look, online games don't last forever. DBD will eventually come to an end...but that won't be anytime soon. DBD is actually doing very well for a 6-year old game.
Are there ongoing problems with bugs, balance, matchmaking, etc.? Yes, of course, as there are with all online games.
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People who come for events usually won't stay
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Oh wow another DbD is dying post!
I swear it must have like a single staple on its pinky finger, because this is the slowest death Ive ever seen
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um... the pandemic didnt bring that many players... plus the pandemic has been over... it brought 10-13k players on Steam. Theyve lost way more.
The numbers are a rollercoaster with enough vertical G's it would kill you. This is not a short term trend. More people watch DBD on twitch than they do playing. thats hugely sub-optimal.
Please stop White Knighting for BHVR. They need to get it together.
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At this point you should have bought a entire library
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I don't care about queue times. If i had to wait 15-30m to get into a game that didn't have a huge chance of having cheaters, VPNers or anything else shady that would imbalance the game, i'd be all for it. But as it currently stands, that is not the case.
I took a LONG time off, only to Come back and its worse than it was. I haven't cared about "Winning" in a very long time. BHVR has had so many ignored suggestions its absolutely staggering. I alone have given them PLENTY(a lot would make them $ too). But they don't listen. They ignored our complaints until 3 days after Otz posted a YT video complaining about cheaters and started streaming other stuff. THEN they released a statement.. that wasn't even that impressive.
I found turning crossplay OFF drastically increases the quality of the games I played in the last 48 hours. Unfortunately, you can't get BP incentives with Crossplay off.
I stopped playing in February of this year, and only came back as of yesterday morning. The game is in a worse state. While I understand everyone's game experience is going to differ, mine has been laced with too much cheating for me to give BHVR any type of "kudos". Then when looking up what these cheaters can actually do, it made me immediately stop playing. The game is going in the closet for me until they do something and get a different anti-cheat. I'm only on the forums because I want BHVR to do better because DBD has a vast amount of untapped potential. Then, between failed games like VHS and GTFO, they don't even have competition... which is a big factor in how they operate right now. Sadly they can't do better until they start listening. They don't even listen to their Fog Whisperers.
As far as builds go, until they put -all- the perks on the Shrine to even the playing field, you have to Pay for perks. The good stuff is locked behind Auric Cells/Real money(ie: Lethal/Soul Guard). Like, how did Flashbang hit the Shrine before Soul Guard? BHVR's priorities seem to be the equivelant of shrapnel from a bomb: its all over the place.
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Misery Squad gotta Misery without actual context or understanding.
Tell dat 2 da massive console plyuirbase w da freeness on da pSN and GamePasssses.
Also, tell dat 2 da constant 30-40k players online on at any given thyme dat means da game get like 1-2m unique logins a day, unless u tink dey da same purson!
But, as always, the inability to understand reality/statistics/notice that it is in the top percentile on every steam/console metric:
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I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with the game. I also understand your frustration. But saying BHVR don't listen might be a bit too harsh. Sometimes I'm really glad they don't add every suggestet mechanic and feature to the game. We don't know exactly what they did about cheaters up until now but we do know they identified the problem and they are working on it, which is a huge win in my books. Their road map on the problem gave me hope.
At the end of last year I was in a similar position. I had very unbalanced matches and quite a few cheaters. I didn't enjoy playing DBD anymore. A friend of mine showed me a video however. It was a compilation of Hillbilly curves that impressed me so much I wanted to learn this. I stopped focusing on most of the issues this game had and instead only tried to get better with this 1 killer. When I encountered a cheater I would practice to 99 the chainsaw and do curves around random obstacles. Maybe something like that would help you too.
As for the shrine I agree it's quite frustrating. However the perks in the shrine are randomly generated. BHVR rarely decide which perks come to the shrine directly. I remember some event where the community got to decide and only one other occasion when they for whatever reason switched BBQ to some other perk. They went back on it though.
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As much as I appreciate your apology, that's not on you. That's on the development staff.
Their own Fog Whisperers have come out and said they don't listen. Like, how they said Rubberbanding started way later than it actually did. People were experiencing Rubberbanding for almost a year and a half before they even addressed it. Then it took 6 months to "fix" it but its still happening, just not as bad. So, to say I'm beyond fed up with how BHVR has gone about things is an understatement.
The few things they HAVE actually listened to, have come literally years after it was suggested. I understand they have licenses with due dates they need to make... but they put that stress on themselves and they shouldn't have done that. I would love to go back to buying all the DLC and wasting my money on probably the best Horror Title on the market, especially for how old it is. But they are breaking more and more when they try to fix things. Its frustrating to watch, and literally maddening to play more than 70% of the time.
The recent PTB is a great indicator of how well they listen. When I'm not playing, I'm watching several streamers play(2 fog whisperers, 1 ex fog whisperer, and several smaller dbd streamers). They have all said the same thing. BHVR is messing the game up with changes nobody asked for in an attempt to balance the game. But they need to play their game on the same level as the people who are abusing things.
I've been suggesting things to BHVR since before these forums were ever created, and I've deleted my account several times over Moderator abuse, and its about to happen again... Since i just had a post "censored" by a mod when trying to tell someone about what happened to me and WHY i'm pissed off. I was one of the people who got hacked in the PTB back in April. I left to go play other games and about a month later, and came back to test the PTB. I got maybe 3-4 games in before bad ######### happened(I wont say what happened, because i'll probably get banned since its a sensitive subject and bad for their player PR).
The Shrine needs to be moderated. Not RNG. They have full control over what goes up in their game and people have been screaming at them for years and years to balance it. They're more focused on sales and don't want to put the perks up there because it will affect license sales. Wesker is probably the most fun killer they've released in a while, but it was immediately overshadowed by heavy SoloQ nerfs.
Edit: typos
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While I do agree that BHVR are slow on fixing things they are still fixing those things. Sometimes it takes them years but I think it's rather obvious they have a bit of a hard time making decisions for the game as they can't really look elsewhere. DBD is not like CoD or Battlefield where there are others that successfully do it. It's quite unique. By no means do I think the devs are doing everything perfect but I'm not sure how hard we can be on them about this. The thing about Fog Whisperers is a bit like what I said earlier. There are some things that I am glad don't get implemented. Also no matter what they do, someone will still complain about it. Even the grind reduction got a bit of negative feedback from some people. And since you don't need to have a lot of experience or meet special criteria in terms of skill and wether or not you play both sides regularly it's hard to decide how much they should rely on their Fog Whisperers in terms of game balancing. I guess they could introduce some kind of hierarchy among the Fog Whisperers but that would betray its initial purpose. But it would be nice if BHVR decided to be a bit more open about their working process and maybe told the Fog Whisperers some more details they could spread.
I think the shrine is almost fine as it is. If BHVR were to pick the perks they would get so much negative feedback every week no matter what and sometimes for no good reason. However I think a positive and healthy change would be to increase the probability of a perk getting in the shrine based on how many times they have been in the game and how many times they have been in the shrine before. For example it seems like Dead Hard is in the shrine every other week while Lethal pursuer did not occur and therefore should have a higher chance. Don't get me wrong though 2 survivor and 2 killer perks are fine, just couldn't couldn't come up with a better example from the top of my head. I know that perks can not get in the shrine within 12 months of their release which is understandable as perks are sometimes the reason we buy a dlc and I'm not sure what changes to make to that part.
I have no idea what they were thinking when they worked on this PTB but you're right. No one asked for that. I mean, it would be more than enough to give killers the the choice to mori the last remaining survivor after downing them. That would still allow to give people hatch (which I think is a good thing as it spreads a bit of positivity) while still satisfying the idea to make moris a more present part of the game. Why would they still work on the rest?
Something they could however do to please a majority of players (at least in theory) is share the data on their occasional surveys and adjust the order of future content a bit to it. Like for example I'm pretty sure many people had SoloQ QoL improvements as their number one priority. If they went through with that first and buffed killers after I reckon at least some players would not be as disappointed as they are now. However the people that constantly complain about the entirety of killers being completely broken would unfortunately remain.
Looking back on the things BHVR did this year I think they really did a good job. Could it be better? Definitely but I'm not going to pretend like all the good things didn't happen. The meta shake up worked exactly as intended and any criticism about DH or DS being too weak doesn't change that they met the actual goal and made games way less stale and predictable. The anniversary and Dredge were very well received by a vast majority of players. I might not agree with everything and I still think a standard cosmetic for every non-licensed character in these events is a nice thing even if they are lower quality that I would prefer to a few higher quality cosmetics but if the majority of players like it just the way it is, then so be it. They reworked Haddonfield and it's visually stunning and gameplay wise better than before at least. And they aknowledged the cheater problem and gave us information on how they are going to handle it.
Lastly about the forum. There are sooo many new posts every hour that they could never hope keep up with it. The DBD community can best be described as passionate. We all care about the game and we all have our unique perspectives and often want to voice them. Even if they had 100 people reading through posts on the forum I don't think there would be any way to evaluate it all. Instead it would be nice if they collected hints on generall thoughts of the community (though maybe they even try and do that) like on the upcoming PTB. Our feedback can probably be summarised in 2 sentences. "We don't like the new mori system and base kit unbreakable will bear some issues." and "We are mostly happy with the flashlight changes or at least understand where you're coming from but we would like some adjustments."
I definitely changed my tone on BHVR over the year but honestly it's shameful how much negative feedback and how little positive feedback they get from us (myself included, sadly) and how resentful the community's tone can get sometimes. It's not like we all hate the game. Then we wouldn't be playing it and even voicing our disagreements in the forum.
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Looks like a relatively stable long term trend to me with a sustain high end spike coinciding with lockdown that declines till the rework patch spike but still sits in the 50-60k peak bandwidth that DBD has sat at for the last year (it peaked at 100K during lock down). Which is generally higher than previous years.
I'd say the only data point of concern is the most recent with a peak player dipping below the 50k but is it a trend or is it an outlier? It'll be several months before that is clear but that's how data works, when you know how to read it and nothing up till that one blip suggests the game is dying.
Again they are peak player counts so its very face value, but its as I said numbers while fluctuating in the short tern are generally higher than previous years, accounting for a pandemic bubble.
I know it sucks when facts ruin your opinion but that's why facts are so great they don't care about opinions.
I'm hardly white knighting for BHVR, I know its a great buzz word to use but I'm not sure it means what you think it means.
So big words and numbers that's your homework for tonight we'll reconvene in a week and see how you did.
Today you get a stormy cloud 🌩️ but study hard and one day you might get a smiley face 😀
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If you look at player retention through the years; you'll notice it been dropping more and more each year.
Yes, events will bring back players; but it has not been shown to hold onto those players.
This isn't debatable, this is just analzing retention/player tables.
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If you're just looking at Steam charts, then it is highly debatable for the following reasons:
1. Steam charts only represent Steam players. This does not take into account the various other platforms this game's played on, and from my knowledge this isn't possible. So we cannot conclusively say what the trend is.
2. Following on from above, the Steam playerbase will have different views and opinions from other platforms. And also it has different game titles and such coming out, so it depends on what is available to play at the time. So on one platform it may go down, but another it may go up. It's a little like judging public opinion on politics by taking a survey solely from an area which is more positive than negative.
3. The popularity of the game is also measured by company growth and interest. BHVR has increased its staff, and although it won't solely be because of this game, it's a huge part of it. It's been voted one of the best companies to work for, and clearly from its growth it currently is doing well, so it's safe to assume its chief title is also healthy. It's also now working on a huge title in Silent Hill: Ascension.
4. Licences are still coming in, with one director even hassling DBD to get their Clown killer into the game. It's making a lot of money from licences and is even bleeding out of its genre, with links to PUBG and For Honor. It's got legs and interest.
5. Since BHVR have been focusing more on game balance, the overall playerbase has expanded over the last 6 months based on Steam charts (and yes, I'm aware what I said earlier, but considering how many months they were losing players, this shows a return to favour, at least on Steam). It's been seen overall as more favourable, and because of them listening more and dealing with cheaters, whoch brings back trust.
6. Cheaters. Since a lot are on PC, is it possible to suggest that a fall in playerbase may also link in cheaters leaving? Also, before that people left because of cheaters. If things improve, then I'd say it will gain even more favour.
I'll stop there, but the game dying statements is basically a meme now. There's no concrete evidence to suggest otherwise, and even the Steam charts show a gain over the last 6 months.
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Game has been dying since its release.
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People have been claiming this game is dying since... forever. Just because you want it to fail, doesn't mean it will.
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cope
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I think you can see the difference in the queues. The side of the game with 4x the players has taken a beating in the last 4 months. SWF's and highly skilled survivors do ok after the nerfs, but my experience at the middle of MMR and low MMR is that killers are destroying matches. My friend who joined just before the great killer gift of 2022 basically never escaped for the first 4 months she played. She only persevered because it was something to do with us at night. Any game that annihilates its new players is doomed to die in the long term. You need those new players to replace the old vets who get bored, or dislike the direction the game is going.
Now I think the OP is being hyperbolic, but I don't think you can really look at recent data and say the trend is good. They offered a free weekend during an event?!? isn't the event what draws players back, why would you need to ramp marketing by offering a free to play week on top of that? Most disturbing is that the high res steam chart for the last week... during the free to play week, had no perceptible difference to online numbers.
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- If you're going to discredit Steam as a valuable sorce of data-collection and then list other platforms [many of which do whatever possible to hide such data] then you cannot, in the same vein, say it's not.
- However slight the differences are, there is an overall agreeance on variating topics that actually matter universally. So, that remotely isn't a good rebuttal.
- Growing it's staff is such a loaded interger when used to cite how a game is doing. Blizzard has hundreds and hundreds of staff at it's disposal yet the quality of it's games/playerbase differ widely.
- I have no idea what you mean by "bleeding out it's genre". If you're saying its killing other surival-horror games. That simply isn't true. So go ahead, BVHR can subvert the quality of the game by adding random "licenses". It still won't do much to retain it's playerbase. Especially with the very old war that has been waging between Survivors and Killers.
- I took a lengthy break due to the deplorable state of DBD. [Roughly around 6months, maybe longer] and recently came back, seeing barely any noticable changes that have dissuaded me from the still very much current belief that Survivors still hold the power. But you cannot previously state Steam isn't a full-source then try to uose it. No. The return to favor has been due to grabbing old-players back with "Mega-Update" + Wesker + Halloween Event. As for the cheater remark. I cannot really remark on that, since, personally, I haven't seen rampant cheating problems after the first three years of the game.
- Same remark. To say people solely left because of Cheaters is massively incorrect. I'd say the biggest concern was the general lack of quality content, poor developer balancing, tired and abused killers leaving the game, etc.
- I have about [thinks] 5k hours or so in this game between two accounts. Have been here since there were only 3 killers and 1 map and window meme was a thing. So I'm by no means, misinformed.
Cheers!
P.S by no means is this game "dead", but I seriously doubt the state of DBD will continue to maintain a vast majority of it's player in the coming years. As has been shown over the course of year-sample size.
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speak for yourself. I quit the game 5 times already, and might do it a final sixed time once this Halloween event is over, Just you see!
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yea but the halloween event is temporary players. That always happens...
While i dont think the game is gonna die anytime soon its def going down hill really quickly after the old DS dh nerf and all that. I mean it was a good change if you ask me but it cant be healthy to go from 5x as many surviors as killers to like 2 - 3x more killers than survivors and considering that survivors DC after the first down in half of my games i can imagine that most of them arent happy about the changes even after a few months ;)
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The devs try the impossible, to balance around solo and swf at the same time. Wont work, and either killers are unhappy, or solo survivors.
I believe that will be the downfall of the game.
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I get in games pretty quickly as killer. Like really quick. Not even three minutes. Really easy to forget that your personal experience doesn't reflect the entirety of everyone in the game
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There is some truth in this. Solo has been down for far too long and needs luvinz badly.
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Me reading this post:
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1. I never discreditted Steam, but pointed out it was a small portion of the overall playerbase. Not sure where the idea of discrediting it came from. It's about proportion.
2. There are overarching ideas, but there are also other reasons and games on different platforms which may lead to some loss of interest. I grant it's not a big reason for change, but it's also unwise to ignore it.
3. I don't believe pumping more staff into a game would be done to a game that's dying, so it shows confidence in the product. They've mentioned in the past about increasing staffing, and that's not done unless there's revenue and reason to continue it. It's a decent sign of game health.
4. To clarify, "bleeding out" into other genres means it's becoming involved in genres not normally associated with it, so PUBG is not survival horror, for example, but DBD has become involved in a cross-over. I appreciate you didn't understand what was meant, but it's best not to make an assumption, and just ask instead for clarification.
5. I see your point about Steam, and I'm sure you would have read that I too saw the irony in it, but to initially say it was going down when the only source you had at your disposal was right in front of you, and said otherwise, is a very confusing analysis to make. I'm not sure, if that was your source, how you could have maintained this stance.
6. My comment never said cheaters were solely responsible, but implied there may be a link between a fall and cheaters leaving, which is very plausible. Not the sole reason, for if I felt it was then my comment would have said so.
7. 5k in hours means you have gained 5k hours worth of your own experience, which will be riddled with bias, as would anyone else in the game. Therefore, that experience only relates to you, and may not relate to others with similar experience in the field who may think differently. No idea why you say you were not misinformed, since nothing was said about you being so.
Ultimately, my point was to state that a game cannot be judged as going down based on a single piece of data which shows a segment of the whole playerbase. That was where my points were alluding to. And I stand by my comment that those who say it is dying are basically regurgitating a meme at this time.
I appreciate you being civil in your reply though. In the past, some others have been somewhat dickish, but I'm glad you were a) respectful and b) brought in counter arguments that for the main part felt thought out.
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