The Amanda's Letter add-on for The Pig has been Kill Switched due to an issue with incorrect RBT count.
http://dbd.game/killswitch
Is DbD about to take a dive?
DbD has an active season with lasts about 7 months. Usually it lasts from mid-June until the end of the year. During this period we get all of the noteworthy events, the Anniversary, Halloween, and Winter.
From the beginning of the year until the anniversary, DbD enters what I call the "dead season." In this period we only get the Lunar New Year as an event but it has been lackluster since 2019. Killers released in December and March underperform compared to their hyped up Anniversary and September counterparts. It's just a very boring time to play DbD and it happens every year.
According to Steam Charts, the dead season always sees the player base drop to its lowest low every year which happens in March or April. The only exception to this is in March of 2020 when the Slinger was released which ended the "Growth Era" of DbD and started its "High Plateau Era," where the player base in all but one month stayed above 30k average players. I call it a plateau because the average player base doesn't grow despite the largest DLC launches and highest peaks in this period.
Going to more current Steam Charts, we can see that DbD is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for its High Plateau numbers, already falling below 33k average players over last 30 days at the time of this post. Starting at 33k in December of this year is already much lower than last year's 44k. Last year DbD lost 33% of its player base from between January and April... so this year is already looking really bad. Just a loss of 10% of the player base between now and March will put DbD at the lowest it's ever been in the last 3 years.
I predict a low of 25k average players on Steam Charts in March or April. BHVR has to come up with something truly magical for this not to happen, in my opinion.
What do you think?
Is DbD's High Plateau over? Is this the beginning of the end?
Or do Steam Charts figures not matter at all? Am I full of it?
Are you still hyped and excited for DbD's future? Will DbD experience a renaissance?
Comments
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It's impossible to say.
Personally, the only thing that will kill DBD is DBD.
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as soon the winter event starts the numbers will go up agian.
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Steam charts doesn't factor in Epic or Console. Most people play on Console I believe
The drop in numbers does mean that player retention is somewhat down and I mean, this isn't anything new - when BHVR releases buggy unfinished messes, (See: Binding of Kin, Forged in Fog) people stop playing until they fix it.
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Will they though? They didn't last year.
I assume that console numbers experience similar trends because the gameplay experience is the same if not worse. I also doubt that Epic makes up the difference for losses on other platforms.
What's new is that we're hitting a much lower low.
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I believe these numbers are the normal numbers for the game, 2020 and 2021 had such huge growth because the COVID19 pandemic, almost all videogame companies overperformed, people staying at home and plenty of leisure options being closed or canceled bolstered numbers for videogames (and streaming services), now the pandemic is not over yet but in a much softened stage people return to their normal activities and videogames return to their former performance.
While you are right numbers in one platform doesnt mean the same for others if I had to take a bet I would go for "the numbers in the other platforms saw a similar decrease as the ones in Steam" I worked for two years in goverment surveys and I was baffled at how samples of people fit the majority of the population except very specific cases (like selecting a district known for having lots of retired people or a college dorm, those were the few which skewed the surveys).
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July 2021 100k players on STEAM on RE Chapter 1 fast forward to now just a 1 year later and after RE Chapter 2 we're at the 30ks...
CASUALS GAVE BHVR MONEY because of the Hype for RE Chapter and then left.
BHVR keeps making the game for casuals cause CASUALS = MONEY
As long as this is the path you'll always see the same population pattern happen. The veterans will get more and more tired of nothing ever changing and the loswest player count will gradually get lower.
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'I'm just asking Questions here'
Great another fearmonger doomsayer post, and people say FOMO is bad.
Ill remind you all Steam Charts figures does not incapsulate anything worthy of a whole picture, the discussions around this are so bad because people are willing to stake their education on one statistic regarding a videogame as PROOF of the Game Dying. But why? Well people need a reason to justify their belief in the importance of whatever they are unhappy about in the game. So people are grasping at straws to make their point, Last time I discussed this with someone hardheaded, I called my country's national statistics service to ask them how they do it. To sum it up most statistics are worthless alone, what you need is an after study in order to confirm things. Numbers on which bHVR keep to themselves.
So its all pointless to speculate about, only bHVR can do statistics on the real picture of things and they will do the changes needed.
Now I better get back to complaining about Dead Hard, you know the Important stuff we do here.
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Is it possible that BHVR is using FOMO sales tactics as a response to their declining player base to prop up their bottom line?
Oh I'm sorry there I go asking a question again.
*robot voice* Don't ask questions. Just consume product and be excited for next product.
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You mistake me dismissing Questions that cant be answered with consumer compliance.
Its a waste of our time to even engage when we wont get an answer, your questioning will only take you directly into Conspiracy Theories.
So its a no go, waste of time.
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Dead by daylight 2.
Make it real.
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I thought in one of the latest Q&A's the devs said they had no plans for making a DBD2
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I know, but still... Make it real.
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DbD 2 would be good, biggest problem is that the game built wrong, and very easy to cheat
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To be honest, I haven't been hyped and excited for DbD's future since.. well, a LONG time.
I did manage to find enjoyment again, all thanks to Sadako, but honestly that is as far as it gets.
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DBD when accounting for all platforms has around 100k daily players. I'm sure DBD will be fine. Can't expect a game with no different game modes, and the same gameplay loop since launch to have infinite growth potential the same way fps games and hero shooters can.
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At the very least, doing so would allow them to freshly code it from scratch. That hopefully would make it much more stable, better optimized, and maybe plug up some hack holes too.
We can dream though fam
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I’m not optimistic. The game is 6 years old and is becoming more and more problematic for the devs to maintain. This last patch was a huge mess. It’s getting harder and harder to come up with creative and fun ideas for killer powers and perks for both sides. At some point they’re going to transition from “growth” mode to “milk it” mode and I think they are close to or have already hit that transition point.
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Or another Asymmetrical Game like DbD that doesn't kill itself or is actually fun....Evil Could of been that but that game is so unbalanced that it makes DbD like it's in perfect harmony....
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Maybe very slightly since there was also just a new chapter. It'll just nosedive again once the event ends. I don't think any reasonable person can pretend like a game tanking in player count after new content is a good thing. I think the honeymoon phase from the recent updates is over and people are realizing how boring/unbalanced the current meta is. One thing they need to do to keep interest is to get rid of the long time between patches. Maybe do them every month instead. They just take so long to address major issues that the game becomes frustrating to play.
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The drop may because of all the bad reviews. I play on console and just happened to read the reviews available when downloading the game. According to those reviews this is like the most hated game on the planet lol.
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I think that the 'dead season' can be avoided by putting out a popular license. The first RE chapter was in that time frame and I doubt very much that the numbers didn't spike because of it.
On the other hand, I'm one of those people that would love to see a period of bug fixes and balancing. Even skip a new killer/survivor release for a quarter and the game could end up in a better place all around after that.
Unfortunately, BHVR seem to be doing the opposite of that. I wouldn't be surprised if they announced MORE killer and survivor releases, MORE skins, and stopped trying to fix maps, bugs and balance the game completely, because it cannot be more clear that they are trying to make as much money as they possibly can. Resorting to what most people view as scummy tactics to milk the player base is a clear sign that they are heading in that, obviously wrong, direction, instead.
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You mention the high plateau that started March 2020, which coincides really with the start of the pandemic. Lots of businesses closed, people staying home. Life has now, in 2022, more or less started returning to normal. Less time to play video games I'd imagine overall.
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You and others mention the pandemic as a cause for the drop in players, nut I am not buying that either. Many games have managed grow their player bases and maintain those numbers even though life has returned to normal. There are a more that a few examples of this but DayZ and War Thunder have the most comparable numbers.
Look at Stardew Valley! That game is nipping at DbD's heels! DbD, the viral horror asymmetrical phenomenon itself, might get surpassed in amount of players on Steam by a 2D Harvest Moon remake developed by one man.
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Okay, well if we exclude the pandemic from the equation, what do you think was the cause behind the sudden increase in players in March 2020, that carried on up until recently? If we are going to look at what's caused a drop in steam players in recent months it might be worth looking at what drew them in to begin with and what then changed? I personally feel like Deathslinger is just okay and not really a massive draw, but happy to be proven wrong
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DbD was in its prime back then. It was probably the best time for maps in the game as Hawkins was still in the game and they hadn't gone on the flat survivor-sided map rampage yet. There was still a freshness to the game for many people back then as it hadn't been on the consoles that long. The meta of Ruin before Undying was a more fun meta that CoB/Eruption. Dead Hard might have been overpowered but it certainly was fun to use. Spine Chill wasn't nerfed so the vault build was super-strong.
Also, the RE chapter got leaked super early and that was the largest launch ever for DbD which brought many, many new players to DbD to kick off the plateau. It's a damn shame BHVR couldn't live up to the hype and retain those players.
Perhaps the pandemic did help the game peak higher, I'm not saying it didn't but my point with the last post was other games have been able to retain the players gained while DbD hasn't.
Now they're are no new horizons for DbD to see. It's on every platform and in every country it can reach.
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