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BHVR’s selective accessibility

today Bhvr made a tweet about keeping the game acccessible by not planning any spider killers for people with arachnophobia, and of course they have been receiving praise online for it, the thing that bothers me is why is arachnophobia given thought and not other phobias or other disabilities. There’s no black option for blinding for epileptics, the rarity color rework made the game 100x less accessible for color blind people and the color blind options we do have are honestly quiere abysmal. HOH people are just screwed when it comes to spirit. If you want to be known as an accessible game then put the work in. I hope you never have to experience the feeling of a game you care deeply for becoming less accessible for you and to have your concerns fall on deaf ears. You say you want new players, I never thought it would exclude those of us with disabilities.

Comments

  • Unequalmitten86
    Unequalmitten86 Member Posts: 520

    I agree with this. I had a serious fear of spiders when we lived in AZ and that’s when the movie Arachnophobia came out, that movie amplified it. It isn’t so much now even had a pet tarantula. I do agree with OP that if they will make a statement like that then look at all your killers not just one.

  • Unequalmitten86
    Unequalmitten86 Member Posts: 520

    I am sensitive to light so when someone uses a flashlight it hurts my eyes and dims my vision. I still play and one of the main reasons I use lightborn. I wouldn’t expect them to cater to a weird eye issue.

  • AlreadyTracer
    AlreadyTracer Member Posts: 227

    There's differences here though. They understood that they couldn't, for some reason, add a dark blind feature. Instead, they put a notice when you load up the game, so epileptic people weren't blindsided.

    The rarity color rework is stupid, I agree, but they did it to match other games. Colorblind people shouldn't be struggling with the change because the icons and placements are still the same, and if you are...Nightlight exists. Get the old perk skins back.

    HOH people can't play Spirit or against her, and that's just the unfortunate reality of having a sound based killer. And honestly, dbd is just straight up a very sound oriented game, despite all the audio bugs.

    So what do we have here?

    1- Something BHVR apparently can't do, and gave a warning for instead to keep people safe

    2- Something that doesn't affect colorblind people

    3- An unavoidable aspect of the game that can't and won't ever change

    I mean, your entire post is false equivalences

  • Nephil1682
    Nephil1682 Member Posts: 37

    rainbow six siege solves this easily by changing the flash bang effect to a black one with a simple toggle

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 15,082

    Accessibility features in videogames are always selective.. and they didnt specify this was only related tonarachnophobia

  • Ryuhi
    Ryuhi Member Posts: 4,468

    Is it possible to have an accessibility discussion without slippery slope fallacies? Asking for a friend.

    As someone who is directly impacted by my colorblindness with this game, you're both right yet rude about it. Colorblindness affects every person differently, so issues for one might not be an issue for another. That said, the colorblind mode in the game provides a bare minimum accommodation without sacrificing potential advantages. Personally I think things like selecting the base colors for various auras and blood pools would help someone like myself specifically, but if you started getting into things like luminosity (which objectively helps introduce contrast in many situations where hue is the primary difference) would start to get into an advantage gaining issue. That said, the rarity thing was absolutely stupid and they were warned constantly the moment players found out it was going to be a thing, but they refused to scrap the change and further refuse to give an option to revert them to the previous colors, which comes off as extremely tonedeaf and dismissive about the issue.

  • Ryuhi
    Ryuhi Member Posts: 4,468

    Photophobia isn't a "weird eye issue." In fact it often presents naturally as people age. While most people focus on conditions like epilepsy, people who suffer migraines also tend to be very photophobic.

  • terumisan
    terumisan Member Posts: 2,213

    this is a sound based game and sound is super important if someone is hard of hearing they might need to play a different game since the heartbeat meter is already really good if they add something that counters spirit phase might be game breaking

  • smappdooda
    smappdooda Member Posts: 559

    It's weird because they teased a spider creature years ago in the rift.

  • thrive2survive
    thrive2survive Member Posts: 322

    Yet another bad decision.. People have been begging for a spider killer.. BHVR will kill their own game faster than anyone else will so at the end of the day..who really cares anymore.. Dumb ideas will continue to be pushed by people who just don't get it..

  • Choaron
    Choaron Member Posts: 818

    and of course they have been receiving praise online for it

    This is sarcasm, right?

  • Nephil1682
    Nephil1682 Member Posts: 37

    nope people have been singing them praises on Twitter for it.

  • ImWinston
    ImWinston Member Posts: 649
    • I have serious vision problems and playing against Dredge (or on excessively dark maps) is simply a pain. when my eyesight is very tired I put on Ormond or Eyrie of Crows/dead sand to simply rest my eyes. I always thought that playing against Spirit, for those with hearing problems, is something really bad.
  • Aven_Fallen
    Aven_Fallen Member Posts: 17,652

    This is incorrect or at least poorly worded from OPs side. BHVR only confirmed that no Spider-Killer is planned for the foreseeable future, but not because of accessibility. They mentioined accessibility since it came into discussion with a spider killer and arachnophobia, but this is not the reason why there is no Spider-Killer.

  • Unequalmitten86
    Unequalmitten86 Member Posts: 520

    I have chronic migraines but I have always been sensitive to light. I have zero depth perception and can’t see 3D. I also can’t watch people playing video games or I get sick but playing is ok.

    My son is autistic and he can’t play the game as survivor because of all the tunneling and camping.

  • RpTheHotrod
    RpTheHotrod Member Posts: 2,826
    edited June 2025

    As long as they don't trigger anyone's anatideaphobia, I think it'll be fine. Could you imagine?

    Fear of spiders is something that just locks some people up. Not surprising they won't do it.

  • ThatRyanB
    ThatRyanB Member, Administrator, Community Manager Posts: 619

    Hey folks! I wanted to pop into this thread to share a little more about yesterday's post that mentioned accessibility. While it was shared in relation to discussions about arachnophobia, the community response has been extremely valuable in highlighting the vast range of folks' experiences. We've used this as an opportunity to listen and share a wide range of accessibility feedback (as well as players' experiences with different phobias) with the team. That includes notes that have been shared in this thread, like alternative forms of blinding effects.

    So all that to say, please don't hesitate to continue sharing your feedback and experiences with accessibility - we're here to convey your feedback to the team and will continue to do that!

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 15,082

    Never has been, they just stated its not currently in the plans - which includes the planned chapters up until next anniversary chapter.

    I guess theoretically that Community vote chapter may lead to a Spider still


    Survivors were given a visual terror radius, but killers still have a sound occlusion system that purposely hides survivor noises when there isn’t any line of sight.

    The Sound occlusion also affects survivors and iirc doesnt affect the audio of the terror radius either

  • Malkhrim
    Malkhrim Member Posts: 1,193

    Honestly, as much as acessibility is important, not wanting to add specific horrifying stuff because of phobias would a bit too much. The main point of horror is to be disturbing in some way and the entire genre is already full of stuff that can cause different forms of phobia. A "phobia" is an intense irrational fear or aversion to something, and horror is entirely based on things that can cause fear. It's no coincidence the game itself already has at least two perks and one achievement with the names of REAL PHOBIAS (coulrophobia, thanatophobia, hemophobia).

    Hell, if DbD was really commited to avoid phobia-inducing things, then we wouldn't have the Clown, the Plague, and maybe not even the Dredge. Let's just list a few things in the game that are related to phobias. I understand that most of them are less common, but let's just be reminded how, when it comes to horror, almost everything can be related to some phobia:

    Coulrophobia (clowns): there's a clown killer with literally a perk with that name.

    Emetophobia (vomitting or seeing others vomit): the Plague (one thing must be pointed out tho, the devs once put a question in a poll about how much her power would impact each players' gameplay experience… but they did so AFTER she had already released and nothing was done about it to this day).

    Scotophobia (darkness): the Macmillan State maps used to be quite dark, and now we have the Dredge. I don't know if Nightfall could trigger scotophobia or nyctophobia on people, but I wouldn't be surprised.

    Chiroptophobia (bats): Dracula can turn into a small swarm of them, making bat screeches and all.

    Hemophobia (blood): there's even an achievement with this name, and even though it's not .

    Necrophobia (corpses and things related to death): well, this one is really unavoidable.

    Hell, if you want to really go far, there's even Cynophobia (fear of dogs), which is surprisingly common and affects a similar percentage of the world population to aracnophobia, and DbD creates a scenario where a dog is chasing the survivors, biting them, and even attacking them on the ground.

    Either way, if we want to give a more constructive feedback here, I believe it should be easier to put spider-related content in the game in a more accessible what it was done to the Clown or the Plague: just make a spider-like being that doesnt'really have the shape of a spider. Come on, that's literally already in the game: the entity's legs coming out of the hook, the Hag's "Black Widow" skin, and even the facehuggers on Nostromo. Facehuggers were always a bit spider-like, but I never heard of them triggering anyone's aracnophobia in either the movies or games. Buuuut of course, I cannot speak for arachnophobes because I am not one. So you know what? I'm going to make another thread asking people about what people would think about a humanoid-ish spider-like killer. Hold on.

  • Marc_123
    Marc_123 Member Posts: 4,035

    Some feedback that is on my mind. Thanks.

    The item and perk colour change is bad. Adds nothing to the game and makes it worse. A toggle would be fine if you don´t want to change it completely back.

    Chase music is to loud. Especially since for whatever reason almost all of them now have a very short hammering drum- oder percussion-loop. A slider to make it even a little less loud would be great.

    Why the heck can´t we get our NEXT and PREVIOUS buttons back to cycle through chars in the menu. You need much more clicks than before to go through them now. Still feels clunky.

    Please consider something different than "Quests". This is so incredible generic and boring. DbD don´t need to copy every other game. Why take some cool mystery out of the game?

  • Malkhrim
    Malkhrim Member Posts: 1,193

    As someone who is actually very sensible to loud noises and is still not sure if that's due to autism or not (I wasn't diagnosed. At least not yet, but heard profesionals say I have quite a few traits), the most triggering noise in the game is the "generator completed" sound effect. It's loud, high-pitched and reminds me of the ringing of a bell. I hurts to hear those even when I'm playing survivor and already know when it's going to pop.

  • Coffeecrashing
    Coffeecrashing Member Posts: 5,676

    Sound occlusion affects survivors way less than it affects killers, because if a noise is important to survivors, the game makes sure the survivors can hear those noises.

    Did you know Spirit's directional phasing audio used to respect audio occlusion? But people complained that it was unfair they couldn't always hear the audio, so the directional phasing audio was buffed so that it could be easily heard through walls?

    And yes, the terror radius noises are another perfect example, where the audio works perfectly through walls, because it's important for survivors to be able to hear important noises.

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 15,082

    But there are directional, occluded noises that affect survivor players especislly against stealth killers..

    Terror Radius isnt directional so you shouldnt expect it to be treated the same here

  • Sarrif
    Sarrif Member Posts: 219

    Fully agree with your post. There needs to be a killer ban system to prevent people from going against killers they hate or literally can't go against.

  • Coffeecrashing
    Coffeecrashing Member Posts: 5,676

    If chase music were made much quieter, and sound occlusion were removed from the game, do you honestly think survivors and killers would benefit equally from those changes?

  • turksmall236
    turksmall236 Member Posts: 296

    An auto-run/toggle sprint option for survivors would be amazing 🙏

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 15,082

    no, I am not the one that asked for equal treatment in an asymmetrical game either.

    I would welcome these changes for the Killer side, I just think it’s Not really fair to always bring up ‚us vs them‘ for any topic. The terror Radius I just a very specific Feature for the surv side

  • Ryuhi
    Ryuhi Member Posts: 4,468
    edited June 2025

    I can agree with this. While I feel survivor side has been more accommodated in regards to hearing issues (big part of why I play majority survivor,) there are still multiple issue on their side as well. Accessibility especially shouldn't be an us vs them topic, its not about pulling each other down as much as it is making sure everyone is taken care of.

    Regarding phobias, the issue is in psychosomatic responses, which often come hand in hand with many phobias. Its not as much about fear as your body literally tricking you into believing involuntary sensations. There's a very big difference between even deep psychological horror and physically getting ill, or even true Fight/Flight/Freeze/Fawn responses. Few people who advocate for further phobias being excluded from the game think that the ones already there should be ignored, in fact they could (and should) be fixed the same as other accessibility issues.

    Since it is too late as they are already in the game, accommodations would have to involve removing/swapping assets in a voluntary (specifically end user focused) censorship fashion (A setting to force the clown to use an appearance that does not represent a clown specifically, muting vomiting/giving it disassociated visual representation with an unnatural appearance like rainbow vomit, etc.) If you add another common phobia to the mix just because the other mistakes were made in the past, you're putting preference and/or spite before accessibility. There is far more feedback about how phobias do/have affect(ed) players in the community, so we have more data on the subject than we did when Clown was released. Obviously its mostly anecdotal feedback, but people have voiced their difficulties on these topics compared to before they were implemented.

    The most important thing that a lot of people need to understand about how a lot of these issues affect players isn't about fear specifically, its about everything that comes with it turning it into a disproportionately negative experience, as opposed to being a "thrill" with no direct consequence. One of the most important aspects of appreciating horror is that it is always in a safe environment, thats why even cortisol can be welcomed in the right circumstances. Thats something that people should always be able to expect from their games, and a complaint that shouldn't really be ignored.

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 15,082

    thank you so much for this explanation! People have a hard time distinguishing between a phobia and being just afraid of something specifically and i think you worded it very well (better than I ever could).

  • Nephil1682
    Nephil1682 Member Posts: 37

    colorblind people have been yelling about the changes with rarity since they were introduced and the team hasn’t done anything about it.