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Plummeting player count
Looking at the steam charts there has been a steep decline in player base. With the peak for the year being in June at around 99k players. The game is now 36k on December 16th. Now after the Vecna/Laura Croft chapters in the June time frame, it makes sense that there would be a surge in players for the release and decrease afterwards.
That being said the decline was very stable until around September, which is when the decline in player base starts to accelerate. With only some resurgence for the Halloween events and 2v8. After those events things got wayyy worse.
The timing of the drop-off seems to align with the introduction of the finisher mori and the current slugging epidemic in the game. I think the constant slugging is genuinely killing the game. I know of at least 8 people who stopped playing because of this new slug "meta". I myself have decided to stop playing survivor due to it.
so my theory of the plummet is in PART due to the slugging and tunneling issue. What do you guys think is the cause?
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I don't like the direction of the game but the playerbase tends to fluctuate throughout the year. Compare the numbers to this time last year for a clearer picture.
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The peak was July 2021 at 105K players, and I believe that was due to the Resident Evil chapter that brought in a ton of players who only wanted to play for that new content. You need to look at the long-term average and not based the popularity of the game on one-time outliers. Certain special events and new chapters always bring in a large influx of players that don't stick around. The player count is higher than Dec. 2023 and about the same as Dec. 2022. The game is doing fine.
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And will likely return to around 35K when people realize what DBD is
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The player base changes all the time. Its not plummeting. It usually drops a little bit anyways around December. Also, you know steam charts don't take into account from the players on Playstation, Xbox and Switch right? There are A LOT of console players.
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As others have said, there's not really a plummet, the playerbase ebbs and flows over the year consistently.
Even if there were, though, 36k on just one platform is still a very healthy number. Not much reason to be concerned about that.
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The playerbase tends to follow a rough sine wave, this is pretty normal for it.
The game's fine, can we stop the doomposting?
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yes it does, and i don't argue that. however, at the start of the slugging meta the rate of players leaving as accelerated and the wave is less pronounced with a smaller cleft. Relative to previous years this variation is worse and with a steeper drop off. not saying the game is dead or dieing im saying the recent behavior and metas of the game are causing problems with player retention.
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The playerbase always drops during the winter times. Thats happened every year since DBD's release in 2016. Nothing new here
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If you think the player count is dropping, just wait until the FNAF chapter releases. I’m 100% sure the number of players logging in will break the servers
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The FNAF chapter should come with a temporary Freddy buff for irony/puns.
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As others have pointed out, the active playerbase fluctuates over time and has its definite cycles monthly. Plus the vast majority of the playerbase is on the consoles, whose numbers we cannot ever know. But it makes sense those would ebb and flow similarly.
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In fairness the numbers always seem to settle in this general region despite players coming and going. It is definitely in one of the player number troughs but it can be a lot of factors.
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There's not really a point to worry about player counts. It comes up and down with the hype of certain chapters and events. As others have already said, it'll probably jump up by the time FNAF comes around and then simmer back down a few months later. It's natural.
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What exactly is DBD oh wise one? 😂🤣
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Tunneling and slugging isn't any more prevalent now than it's ever been in my experience.
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I just hope that enough survivors will stop playing eventually that Bhvr. will have to make both sides on a more even playing field.
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It looks pretty normal to me. Also comparing the peak from july which is anniversary to now isn't really fair. Look at averages, they're about the exact same as they were last december. The playercount always go up during summer, then down nearing the end of the year, then pick back up again as anniversary approaches.
I especially wouldn't worry about playercount when FNAF is coming next year too.
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can we get to know where is the actual steady decline here? Game is literally constantly fluctuating in terms of peak players/24h, steady decline is nowhere to be seen lol. July was just the anniversary event and active playerbase is usually peaking around that time of the year every single year.
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Oh cool, DBD is up this year for October/November over 2022 and 2023.
Neat.
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The game always spikes in June for the anniversary event
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If players didn't quit en masse during the 3Gen meta to the point it killed the game, Slugging being a massive problem like it is also isn't going to kill the game. There is no player count drop. You're cherrypicking data.
Stop the disingenuous fearmongering. Nobody's falling for it.
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I promise you there will always be more than enough Survivors to keep the game going no matter what, because there's always four times as many Survivors as Killers. It's mathematically impossible for there to ever be so few Survivors the game dies, the entire and I mean ENTIRE Survivor playerbase would need to quit overnight and that's just not feasible. Therefore a bunch of Survivors quitting will not do anything meaningful whatsoever, unlike the time when a lot of Killers quit because Survivors were genuinely too powerful. They stayed during 3gen meta and nothing happened. They stayed during facecamping existing and nothing happened. They stayed when Killers were given stuff like TotH buffed too much, and nothing happened. Nothing changed. It never has, it never will.
The reason it worked for Killers quitting but never does when Survivors sabre-rattle about quitting en masse is because it's a 1v4. If the whole side of the game that only has one per four players is unhappy, the whole game suffers. If the whole side of the game with four times as many people in a queue has even 25% of people annoyed at the game enough to quit, that doesn't matter because there's always more people who come in later for events/modes, free weekends, etc. and there's always people who just don't care enough and will play anyway… there's four times as many. You can therefore afford to lose even half of the current Survivor playerbase and it will still not grind the game to such a halt it's an issue.
We saw this in action with 2v8, where everyone wanted to play Killer and it ruined queue times. It literally does not matter as much how many Survivors you have, Killer retention is much more important. You can replace a Surv with a bot. and functionally nothing changes, as proven by them trying to add bots in player lobbies to quicken queues (which thank god they did not do). You can't replace a Killer with a bot.
If Survivor sucks, the only issue is slightly longer queue times. If Killer sucks, you have no game because Killer simply determines game pacing more.
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White I don't think the game is dying, and we get one of these posts every few months here, there is one thing to point out:
The rest of your post, specifically:
It's mathematically impossible for there to ever be so few Survivors the game dies
and the surrounding argument is simply false on just about every level.
Other asymmetric have have failed, many (almost all) in fact. It's why DbD has effectively zero competition most of the time, except for a few months when a new asymm game tries and then disappears again.
The best, and most relevant example being a different game by BHVR called death garden: where one "Hunter" (killer) went up against 4 scavengers (survivor) trying to escape.
That game died due to balance, specifically they made the killer role too powerful, and the game died because no one wanted to play "survivor". A complete counter example to most of your post.
Let's be honest, the main thing keeping DbD afloat is licensing. Flat out. And that's 100% supported by player counts.
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But the reason it failed is not, IS NOT because "enough Survivors quit".
It's because the experience was so wildly imbalanced, everyone on all sides quit. BHVR doesn't have that issue. If anything its been working on balancing BETTER over time.
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it's just a classic strategy people use hoping others eon't watch the charts in order to prove they are just cherrypicking data
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Such A BS point.
1) Tunneling and slugging have always been a meta.
2) I get tunneled or slugged like one out of 50+ matches its not the problem people say it is. Most people just rarely play so if it happens 2 times in a day they think its constant.
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Survivors are sick of everything and thus many has moved on to other games and there is alot of nice games thst came out on switch and psn( idk of xbox since I do not deal with them).
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Same with resident evil resistance, tcm and evil dead all became mastermind, demon, family sided its pathetic. All these game like dbd share one common thing just catering to the cry baby evil side who always are the ones to complain first on the game release that good side is op.
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No, this is just trying to make your point when you're objectively wrong. The hunter had abilities toward the game's end of life like instantly killing the survivors. The devs tuned the game more and more for the hunter to be more powerful, which both sound disturbingly familiar.
The survivors quit because of balance. The hunters had all the tools and power in that game and basically had no reason to quit unless it was out of boredom.
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please list me complaints made by killer players in the last 365 days vs. complaints made by survivor players last 365 days and which complaints were acknowledged with new basekit features being implemented
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Must be that time of year again.
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christmas spirit arrived
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Um wut? Sarcastic response? I believe I was agreeing with you?
The OP was claiming that the player count is plummeting, your post contradicts that with evidence showing that the player numbers remains consistent.
I then pointed out that October and November 2024 player numbers are about 38000-39000, while the 2023 and 2022 players numbers for October and November were about 31000-33000... this actually shows the player base is growing, not plummeting... In fact if you look at most of the months, 2024 typically has done better that the last couple of years with only a few notable exceptions...
I don't believe I stated anything sarcastic... I merely made a factual observation... I think you might have read into something that wasn't there my dude... 😶
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I'm sorry, the way you worded your response sounded sarcastic and dismissive. It's tough to tell when you can't see someone's face, obviously. I apologize for my rush to assume that you were being rude in your response
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Not FNAF, RE or ST
Once the novelty factor wears off, those people usually just dip out
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Wow considering how bad you are at math I know even more not to take anything you say seriously. Also your comment about survivors being bots is very revealing. You actually don't give a crap abput survivor players whatsoever and look at them as only bots for your amusement. Thats why you demand they be weakened so much so that they are as easy to beat as bots but you still get the ego gratification of knowing you beat an actual person. Its a complicated game of mental gymnastics where you try not to.recognize that the side you play in the game is literally easy mode. Ill tell you the real reason survivors havent quit the game, its because going next on hook exists so at least survivors can get out of the completely unfair situations. Sad that Bhvr. has to use a makeshift quitting mechanic that they pretend they dont want players to use to avoid balancing their game.
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Drifting towards Fortnite thematically
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Oh hey, its the newest incarnation of this thread.
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Which side is the one that has the game mechanics in their favor and wins majority of games by default again?
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the side that has opponent's main objective (hooking) in their favor, that obliterates 99% of killer roster on highest skill levels when there are 0 restrictions on both sides builds wise, but then average player from that side complains about the game being opponent sided because they straight up refuse to learn how to play the game and constantly ask for basekit mechanics to fill the hole left by the same refusal to improve i mentioned earlier.
Lasting 20s in chases against nearly powerless killers on maps you have biggest advantage on in terms of strong tiles when any decent player has at least 60s+ chases, rushing unhooks and forcing unnecessary trades at the worst possible times, giving up first two minutes into the match because you don't like how the match is going for your own "fun".
Game mechanics are currently not in killers favor on highest skill levels, matchmaking is the only thing currently in killers' favor because community wanted it to be this way and community complained how SBMM is bad for the game (at the current state, you are literally having a game without SBMM and it's awful).
After we start talking about killrates, first talk about all:
- random 50h players being thrown into matches with 1000+ hour players;
- players giving up as soon as the first chase goes bad for them;
- players lasting 20s in chases;
- players making worst possible macro decisions and grief their team.
After we settle all pf these out, then feel free to talk about game state when you're actually going to have accurate killrates.
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Please stop trying to shoehorn stats into your arguments like that. The game mechanics are not in killer's favor specifically because overall statistics put them in a higher than 50% win ratio. That does not apply to individual players or any kind of precise measure on how much or little skill variables affect that outcome. Part of why some bad killers have high kill ratios is because they are only really played by specialists, not because those killers are OP.
the 60/40 thing is not saying you will survive 40% of your matches, nor is it saying any killer "wins majority of games by default." You are trying to dilute as many variables as you can to try to weaponize a statistic. Rather than actually basing arguments around the amount of said variables, you're trying to use outcome bias to try to rewrite people's experiences.
Yes, killers overall are more likely to win than lose. How that statistic is weighted by skill matchups/builds/maps/swf/killer viability/survivors going next/etc is something that always comes along with such broad statements.
Edit: Its wild to me how this community in particular has so many people who try to force this mistake. In many fighting games you can almost always be at a 60/40 split or worse (Some can go as low as 80/20) and people still soldier through those matches.
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You cn sugarcoat it however you want, a 20% difference in one side achieving their win condition over the other is massive.
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And yet T.Hawk players in SF4 fully accepted matchups vs Blanka and Sagat, which were 70/30 at best
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I mean maybe you're right about matchmaking being the biggest part of the problem, that is possible. The fact that Bhvr. says they are "shooting for" 60% kill rates though i think is an issue. Its way too high, even if you want killer to be the "power role" go for 55% or something, thats still a 10% advantage.
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I dont know anything about sf4 so I cant say anything about that. I would guess that.game.is still balanced better overall then dbd though.
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I didn't even bother to answer them cause idk what that question of theirs has anything to do on what I said lmao.
Post edited by buggybug on1 -
Yeah, its not. the statistics I mentioned mean that in a match of T.Hawk vs Blanka or Sagat, the T.Hawk player will lose an average of 70% of the time. And thats a non-joke character, Marvel vs Capcom 2 can have matchups like MSP vs Dan/Roll/Servbot, which would almost always end in a perfect without the latter team even getting damage on the board. This game's community just has a weird obsession with trying to stack as many odds in their favor, while complaining when their opponent does the same. It is a lot more balanced than you seem to think, but its balance is also subject to a lot of variables that push the needle in either direction.
Point is, that 60/40 split isn't the magic bullet you seem to think it is. Its indicative of a non-curated blanket comparison, but it does not have any direct bearing on any given match's development. It's an estimate at best.
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