The real problem: Monetization
Out of every problem in DBD, I can firmly say that the worst ones are monetization-related. BHVR keeps adding new skins that people don't want to DLCs to artificially inflate prices, removes skins from the store when it's not "the season" that they should be in the game despite NOBODY wanting that, and they treat a fully paid game like a Freemium game with a Battle Pass and 10$ cosmetics that take UNHOLY amounts of time to grind for.
BHVR will cite not wanting to use FOMO in their reasoning as to why they won't reward their most dedicated players, and then turn around and use FOMO tactics with new cosmetics! On top of this, they actively link sets that SHOULDN'T be linked (Every RE skin, for example) and wonder why people barely play those characters.
This game's pricing is insane, and Iri Shards should be MUCH easier to acquire so new players can at least play the ORIGINAL CONTENT without grinding nearly 2000 hours to unlock every survivor and killer.
And on top of all of these issues, they actively link sets that DON'T NEED TO BE on characters who desperately need skins (gabriel, haddie) and then wonder why they don't ######### sell well! It genuinely feels wrong that they're actively sabotaging their POC survivors by constantly giving their newer ones linked sets and REFUSING to unlink sets that shouldn't be!
I know that this will be fully ignored which is. Frustrating. But please don't make this game a budget fortnite. Y'all are better than this.
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But please don't make this game a budget fortnite. Y'all are better than this.What would be your preference for how they make money?
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Skins have no effect on gameplay and they need money. I am angry about the DLC thing with Nick Cage and Alien but I'm assuming thats down to the licences having a hefty price tag.
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I am not supporting this game anymore until they reverse course on this major issue. 👎️
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I'm fine with paying for skins, but I hate that BHVR forces us to buy in-game currency. The more honest thing would be to put a straight price tag on the skin, none of this auric cell crap. Xbox did this back in the day. It's done so you will buy more cells than you need, so you will have some left over. That way you feel compelled to buy more cells so what you have left over does not go to waste.
It's a great tactic to get people spend money, but it's manipulative and I don't respect it.
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Honestly, I'm fine with the rift pass as is, I just don't want them to use FOMO tactics as they're doing currently to make people think buying something is a better deal than it actually is. Original content should be easier to earn in-game while still being purchasable, and packs like the Headcase pack where you can buy a couple yellow-green rarity cosmetics for 4-5 bucks would be VERY nice and most likely easy to do.
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Honestly, I'm fine with the rift pass as is,If they took away the auric cells this might work, but there's no way they could make the money needed via a single purchase of the rift pass if people just got to regain it every time.
I just don't want them to use FOMO tacticsIt's kind of what lots of games, and other businesses, revolve around. The creation of short term periods to create both interest and sales.
I get the point, though it would likely increase the overall price of a lot of things as frequent cosmetic buyers fun the game for everyone who is not in that group.
Original content should be easier to earn in-game while still being purchasableBut they don't actually make any money from people who just play the game. In fact, it kind of does the opposite. If you are saying the more you play, the less you should need to pay, you're asking those who don't play the game as much to make up the difference.
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I'm personally not bothered. I can choose to pass on skins and DLCs without it affecting my gameplay.
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I honestly be mad when feng, nea, kate, and meg get skins all the time. But on the bright side, at least I dont have to worry about spending money like crazy due to their obvious favoritism. Its a win in my book. More money in my pocket.
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If BHVR had a real price tag on every skin and they were available at the time I would have no complaints. Skins are purely optional. I just wish companies would make products that are good enough that a person would want to buy it, without using psychological techniques to try and push us towards making impulsive purchases.
It doesn't affect me, but I know that stuff does real harm to some people.
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If it's not necessary, can't you just choose not to buy it? When new content is released, if you like it, you can buy it, and if you don't, you can simply not purchase it; it's as simple as that. Even if it's not something you need, there are likely people who want it. If Starbucks introduces a new Frappuccino, and you don't like that menu item, would you go to the store to complain?
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So why is a company wanting to make money from their product a problem again?
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"We don't want fomo"
The amazon prime deal around the corner:
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Seems like the obvious compromise here is rewarding Prestige with cosmetics.
I've got no hate for DBD's money-making. Auric cells keep the Entity alive and growing, that's not lore, that's reality. Cosmetics could be cheaper, but I'm sinking so many hours into this game, I'm getting my money's worth over and over. Playing this game all the time saves me lots of money because I'm not buying other games at all. I hope they ride this cash cow for the rest of my life, just so I'll always have the option of playing.
But the Devs aren't perfect, this was clearly a bad call. Fixing a mistake is the best PR a business can do because it can be done so cheaply. They're in the business of making cool cosmetics, recoloring a few is nothing.
I'm sure they didn't think it through, they just didn't realize the importance of things like that. Doesn't matter if most players don't get there, striving to get there is the point. The fact that most don't get there is why the cosmetic is so valuable and obviously necessary. Many of us just like striving, striving players are great for business.
This is a tiny amount of work to make something that encourages playing more. If people are already playing to get there with no reward, how many would if there was a half-decent reward or even a cool one?
Especially now that the whole thing's blown up. Now it's free publicity, people who might not have even known P cosmetics were a thing will see these. All DBD players will find out. Posts will make the front page of Reddit, etc. Marketing, player retention, good PR, for nearly nothing.
So yeah, it's gotta happen.
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While I can understand your concern and frustration, this is a natural part of inflation. The skins are added to compensate for the need to increase prices which is honestly a kudos to bhvr since many other larger game companies have no problem simply upping the cost without adding anything extra to the game. And if they do be prepared to pay more money for that add on. Similar to how new games on current gen consoles start off at $70 instead of the long time $60 and before that even it was $50. Games are quite lucrative but at least they are trying to give us something extra to compensate
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nah dbd has really nice monetization, with payback battlepass and regional prices(prices in my region fit salaries well). Only bad thing is FOMO but its comebacks every year and theres almost no skins that wont return ever.
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battle passes are practically free unlike any other game i know, and skins coming once every year aka you know they will eventually come is nice, idk maybe i'm just too much of a slave. have you heard of a cosmetic in league of legends called "black alistar"? i looked it up and that ######### costs 400 dollars probably just because it hasn't (and probably won't ever) come back since 2014. that is abusing fomo.
edit: annual skins should have shard prices for OG characters, i'd only argue that.
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I don't see the problem.
You vote with your wallet, plain and simple.
I've not bought the last DLC myself. Although to be perfectly honest it was mostly because I expected the bait-and-switch (the killer being nerfed two weeks after release).
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Functionally, I don't see the point of Auric Cells outside of dissociating people from the value of real money by converting it into nonsense shards. In short, it's dissatisfaction of loss (of money) versus the expected satisfaction (of the purchase). If the dissatisfaction outweighs the expected satisfaction, someone is less likely to make the purchase.
To get around that, you mitigate that dissatisfaction by dissociating the customer from the value of their money by first converting it into some nonsense currency. 350 Auric Cells is always going to sound much more preferable to $4 or whatever. Then, the clever part: you introduce a second currency, that despite being free, it takes many, many times more of it to enact a purchase (and, of course, it takes a ludicrously long time to earn). This gives the paid currency a comparative sense of value and marks it as the smarter choice while further dissociating it from real money. You're not comparing Shard A to real money, you're comparing it to Shard B that has no real world comparison.
TL:DR: There's never a good reason to have multiple nonsense currencies over just listing the price. It's predatory. I'd quite like things to be listed at their real world value and not in fairy money. If Behaviour want to sell skins, that's cool. If they want to sell them at dumb prices, no skin off my nose; Auric Cells just aren't the way to do it.
inb4 this post gets deleted or I get banned or something.
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You do know when you buy the game, they receive that money. This isn't free to play, how do you think Overwatch thrived for years having free skins?
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Player count, base game price, and not having to share revenue with as many partners.
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BHVR will cite not wanting to use FOMO in their reasoning as to why they won't reward their most dedicated players, and then turn around and use FOMO tactics with new cosmetics!
They literally qualified the use of FOMO in their statement, using qualifying sentences. You would have to ignore 35% of the message to come away with the conclusion you have given here. Allow me to highlight the sentences in red for you, these are called qualifying sentences, they add context and change the meaning of other sentences. This is pretty normal for English Speech.
Furthermore the 2nd qualifying sentence literally says what the purpose of prestige is, its a thing for players who have completed everything to have something more. Dedicated players have already been rewarded, that is what the normal prestige outfit is and the charms. Even further FOMO is a perfectly legitimate strategy to use to sell product, human-kind have used this method among others for a long time because it works and its been proven to work.
Just saying if you want to bHVR to change their methods, it helps being accurate about what they are saying and not ignore the parts where they tell you how and why they do the things they do. Civility goes longer than false accusations. 100%.
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Steady DLC releases, cosmetics, and additional mori animations.
Battlepasses suck in basically every regard when they are implemented in the way they currently are. The only way the battlepass system would be acceptable is if they were something I could purchase and complete at my own pace. A few other games have been trying this strategy out and it seems to be working a treat. Though I would argue that battlepasses as a concept should just be thrown away entirely.
Linked set cosmetics should be few and far between rather than the normal standard. I get linked sets for cosmetics that drastically change a character's appearance, but most sets shouldn't be linked and should be designed with that in mind. There isn't a lot to do in this game and messing with cosmetics to make interesting looks was like the only bright spot when the game otherwise isn't doing it for you. Linked sets are killing player expression much like the current approach to reworking killers is killing skill expression.
Making money isn't the problem, it's the way they go about their monetization. It's anti-consumer practice stacked on top of anti-consumer practice where the only people who would truly would be satisfied with this is addicted whale players. Though I don't even think whale level players would be happy with this as their isn't really any truly exclusive things which is good. So the monetization scheme just ends up being annoying most of the time. I personally don't mind the extra cosmetic in bundles, but I get people don't like it more often than not so they would probably sale more stuff if they would stop doing it.
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Making money is not the issue. But using techniques that are well known to disproportionately impact children, people with learning impairments, people with gambling problems ect is just gross. If the design were done by accident that would be one thing, but it's intentional.
Imagine building a monetization system that ends up targetting vulnerable players disproportionately and milking them for money they probably don't have. There's no excuse for it in 2023. There's years of research on this subject. Being ignorant is not a valid defense at this point.
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I could say dbd is better than most games but I have to agree that it is a predatory system regardless.
Still we as society should try to have some self control tbh. It is not like we are completely helpless all the time and at mercy of hobbies of our picking.
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Skins are selling more than ever so the "Skins no one wants" argument is null. Hell I've bought more skins in the past 6 months than I have in the past year because the cosmetic department finally upped their game but ######### FOMO tactics. I cant believe BHVR haven't realized how horrible limited time cosmetics are from a business standpoint
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It is very unlikely they would make more cosmetics as prestige rewards, older licensed characters specifically would be an issue as without re-negotiation for each of them, they probably can't do it for those characters.
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monetization is completel fine imo besides fomo.
YOu can get evrything for free besides licenced stuff
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DBD has an average of 50K to 100K players daily.....the player count is more than fine. The base game price ranges from around 30 to 40 USD....it's not a 5 dollar game. And with the constant stream of paid DLC? Please. And sure, some more revenue sharing, but if you really think they need skin money to pay them then I don't know what to tell you. I never understand why people go so hard for excess monetizations on games
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How is any of this their problem? Kids shouldn't even know DBD exists. Everyone else is responsible for their own actions and the company shouldn't feel obligated to change how they monetize the game because a gambling addict might be playing it. Its not their problem. No one is forcing anyone to click purchase on those auric cells, DLCs, or anything within the game. People have personal responsibility when it comes to these things and that responsibility shouldn't have to fall on the company.
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If I created a monetization system that ended up disproportionately impacting people who were vulnerable to cohersion, I'd redesign it.
So children and people with learning impairments should just be smarter? If they are getting milked it's completely on them to not get manipulated? Companies have no ethical responsibility? We already went through this crap with lootboxes. Do you know what the research found? It was dramatically increasing the rate of childhood gambling addiction.
If you want to be completely selfish about it, people having their finaces drained by manipulative monetization sytems reduces their ability to contribute to society. Combine that with a generation of kids who are already addicted to gambling thanks to lootboxes and you have a bad outcome for everyone.
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"I know that this will be fully ignored which is. Frustrating. But please don't make this game a budget fortnite. Y'all are better than this."
What would lead you to believe that BHVR is better than that?
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BHVR doesn't force anyone to play their game. The kid argument holds no weight, because they shouldn't even be playing the game to begin with. Personal responsibility is a thing and like I said before should not fall on BHVR to be responsible for.
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I'll judge anyone who exploits vulnerable people to make some quick cash. Especially when it does real systemic harm.
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They aren't exploiting anyone. They aren't the ones initiating the transactions people make in their stores. They aren't the ones agreeing to the terms of the purchase the customer made. They aren't the ones clicking on the confirmation buttons after all of this. That is all on the person doing those things. Its not the company's responsibility to moderate these actions made by customers.
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You do realize that there are people who are vulnerable to anything right? If we should take what you say seriously and have a Store that never uses any business strategies that exploit vulnerable people to some degree, then the whole concept of a store falls apart. Hell, some people even cant stop collecting plastic figures some cant handle not owning everything, your support for those people seem to dissipate fast, and why? surely you should judge bHVR for making a store that exploits people who cant handle it? people are hurting every day cause of this.
Indeed there is a line for what practise is exploitative when it comes to businesses strategies, this is why we have laws, seasonal FOMO are not illegal, so society already agreed and decided that it can be permitted, if you cant handle that dont use the store.
If you can find a study that says Seasonal FOMO cosmetics cause gambling addiction maybe you have a point for bHVR.
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Overwatch is one of the top ten selling games of all time with over 50 million copies sold. The best data I could find on DbD is they had around 20 million copies.
On price, console data is hard to find, but on PC Overwatch sold at $40 for about 2 and a half years, before dropping to $20, with occasional drop from then on to $15. DbD opened at $20 and has dropped all the way down to free at points.
On the DLC, I suspect of all the people who purchased the game the majority did not purchase DLC either because they weren't interested or stopped playing the game. People who have put thousands of hours into the game might not be a rarity on the forum, but they aren't really representative of everyone.
I never understand why people go so hard for excess monetizations on gamesI never understand that people don't get how companies work. They want/need to make money, they do this by selling a product people want. As a consumer, if you don't think a product is worth the cost, don't buy it.
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I'm not talking specifically about BHVR, even though they engage in FOMO and use an in-game currency to try and get additional purchases out of you. The person I was responding to said it's down to people to not get caught out by exploitative business practices. I just feel that leaving groups vulnerable to cohersion to the wolves is both selfish and short-sighted.
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Okay? Overwatch is A MASSIVE game developed by a MASSIVE company. DBD is roughly a medium sized game with a small to mediums sized company. Both games have/had adequate proportions in their respective games. It's not that hard to understand.
Also, DBD is currently offered on PSN and Xbox for 29.99 and steam 19.99. Very weird to not say that.
"On the DLC, I suspect....." On what grounds? On what proof? On what data? Huh? This is such a random and bad take
I never understand why people who think they know how companies work don't have a clue what they're talking about. They're selling a product with flaws in monetization, which a consumer is allowed to critique. If you can't handle that, don't come onto a forum where critique is taking place. Simple
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Might be an unpopular opinion but i dont think thats a huge problem.
First of all, i dont have a problem with skins at all. I dont care if they cost 10cent or 100$. As long they dont change the gameplay i dont care.
and they treat a fully paid game like a Freemium game with a Battle PassI kinda disagree on this point. Its not a "fully paid game". Please check how mutch a game cost. a "fully priced game" is at around 60-120€. DbD was (alone in the past 12 months) 10 times on sale. And was in epicstore for free. So you can easily buy it on steam for 6,99€ or 7,99€. If you buy at from keysellers its around 5€
This game is constantly upgraded and got new patches since now over 7 years. What do you think pays for this 7 years of service? Your 6,99 that you paid one time?
can at least play the ORIGINAL CONTENT without grinding nearly 2000 hours to unlock every survivor and killer.To unlock all unlicensed killers you need around 750hours. To buy all licensed killer you need 50€.
I mean survivors are basicly only skins. So its just about the perks. If you check the best perks:
https://dennisreep.nl/dbd/perks/survivor/
This page shows you the best survivor perks in the game, The data is communitybased You see that you need to buy like 2survivors (with IRL money) for the top 20perks in the game.
To buy everything licensed you need to spend around 110€ (+6,99€ for the game). Thats a full priced game. Yes its more expensive than normal games, but thats the disadvantage of free-to-play or lowcost-to-play games.
I just dont see Dead by daylight as a "full price game". Because it isnt. And because of that its allways kinda "pay to play" or "pay to win". In case of dead by daylight i think the monetization is okey-ish. Yes it could be better, but it also could be way worse.
In my opinion the price of "older licensed" stuff should sink, so if you are starting DbD now you could buy every licensed stuff for 60-80€.
That a new licensed killer cost 5€ is okey. Especally because normaly it allways 1 licensed killer than 1 unlicensed killer.
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Not to leap to BHVR's defence, but there are some objectively incorrect or ignorant statementsh here. The question is when does personal responsibility end and corporate responsibility begin, and is the corporate doing anything demonstrably wrong?
All transactions and agreements are done at point of sale. You as the consumer are not forced to buy anything. Any sale is a mutual agreement between 2 parties to exchange good/services/capital for the benefit of both parties. If you don't like the agreement offered, you don't agree to buy... it's that simple.
We are all aware of and acknowledge the insane cost and work load involved for game development, and yet it seems to be selectively forgotten when anyone wants to push a narrative to get what they want.
For all points raised here, options exist that are completely reasonable objectively.
For Xenomorph, Ripley and Nic Cage:
- £9.99 for Xeno, Ripley + Ripley Skin.
- £7.99 for Nick Cage + Skin.
- 500 Auric Cells (£3.99) each char otherwise.
- 1080 Auric Cells (£7.85) each skin otherwise.
The fact you can buy EXACTLY 500 Auric Cells for £3.99 means there is absolutely no penalty to the consumer, other than the fact you can't have a check mark in your Steam/PSN/Live store to say you've bought the DLC.
You can buy all 3 with any combination of Auric Cells you wish, and that can even save you money long term if you're smart with it, so to say this is anti consumer or a psychological manipulation is false.
As for limited edition skins, we don't get mad at coffee shops only doing their Pumpkin Spice at Halloween, or Subway doing their Turkey sub at Christmas, or Kickstarters only doing their additional exclusives throughout the Kickstarter campaign, because we understand that these are limited event things. If you want a skin you can agree to buy it, but you understand at POS this is a limited event thing, so if you want it buy it. The seller is under no obligation to continue to supply an item on the grounds you MIGHT buy it one day. The fact is, most of these come around again the following year...
Not to mention these are skins that have no effect on gameplay... so there is no real argument of unfairness there, its privilege to get items you want WHEN you want them.
As for the new player experience and the grind, there is an effect on gameplay here, and the effect of perks locked behind a pay wall is a genuine concern. However BHVR have an option for getting premium perks for free. The thing is you are getting access to this premium content in exchange for your TIME. By playing the game, you increase the games footfall, which benefits the game, and in turn you are provided a means of gaining things via investment of your time instead of money. This is essentially the same as POS, you are received goods, in exchamge for your services.
Now the Shrine of Secrets is admittedly too limited and needs to be improved, but the fact exists is objectively another reasonable argument against the notion BHVR is greedy and unfair.
The battle pass also only grants items that are cosmetic, limited to the battlepass. Once again there is no gameplay mechanic that benefits from the battle pass, its purely cosmetics, so I don't even understand this argument.
Furthermore if you buy the battlepass, you earn the equivalent Auric Cells you paid as part of the battle pass, which means you can get the next one effectively for free... this seems like quote a reasonable method of attaining a large number of cosmetics for a relatively small investment... again this is hardly something you can call unfair or greedy...
I don't want to rubbish anyone's opinion, but opinions are subjective, you may not like the options available to you, and that's fine. You are free to argue that these deals offered to you are not in line with what you are willing to pay or how you are willing to pay it...
However given the objective fact is, mechanisms exist for all players to attain these items via comparatively reasonable means, and most of the items here are cosmetic in nature, with no express advantage within the game... I don't see any genuine reason to criticise BHVR on their monetisation.
I've seen far more agregious, unreasonable and blatantly exploitative practises that anything BHVR are doing... Based on my experience, BHVR are actually pretty darn reasonable compared to a lot of the gaming industry.
Post edited by UndeddJester on3 -
That depends if they argue for total free for all exploitation or legal exploitation. Either way my points isnt about them rather you arguing in ways that would make owning a store philosophically impossible because in you could argue infinite ways something being sold is an exploitation
I think its way better for the argument you focus of specific practises that are relevant and harmful to kids. So yes / no do you have any evidence that certain practises bHVR does in Dead by Daylight is harmful to kids or cause addiction?
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"On the DLC, I suspect....." On what grounds? On what proof? On what data? Huh? This is such a random and bad takeI never understand why people who think they know how companies work don't have a clue what they're talking aboutOn what grounds am I wrong? On what proof? On what data?
It's easy to claim someone else doesn't have data, but what exactly is your argument based on? I'm willing to admit places I'm relying on logical arguments because I don't believe anyone has access to BHVR's financial data.
Here are the logical reasons that the DLC likely doesn't see sales anywhere near the number of original copies.
1: Inevitably, there are people who stop playing the game. If everyone who ever purchased the game was still playing we'd see player counts over ten million. People who aren't playing the game aren't going to buy a DLC.
2: If a DLC doesn't interest a player, they have no reason to buy it.
3: Casual players have less incentive to buy more content. If a person only plays the game a few times a month, the base game can last quite awhile.
Okay? Overwatch is A MASSIVE game developed by a MASSIVE company. DBD is roughly a medium sized game with a small to mediums sized company. Both games have/had adequate proportions in their respective games. It's not that hard to understand.I don't know whether you think Overwatch is a good example or not. You are the one who originally brought them up.
Also, DBD is currently offered on PSN and Xbox for 29.99 and steam 19.99. Very weird to not say that.I provided the data for DbD and noted that it is a game that at times has sold at deep discounts.
Also, how many people do you think are buying new copies of DbD at this point in time?
They're selling a product with flaws in monetization, which a consumer is allowed to critique. If you can't handle that, don't come onto a forum where critique is taking place. SimpleIf you can't handle people pointing out and giving reasons why you are wrong, don't come onto forums. You are allowed as a consumer to say you dislike something, but others are allowed to point out why that's not reasonable.
DbD is a game that sees continual development. The people working on that need to be paid and expenses need to be covered. That requires a steady stream of income.
Sales of a game at $20 a pop are not going to cover 7 years of development. A couple of licensed DLC each year are not going to cover those costs at current price points. Either they need an additional source of revenue, i.e. cosmetics, or the base price of the other products would need to increase (which probably wouldn't be viable).
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