Future of Dead by Daylight Forums
Hello everybody,
As you’re all aware, we are currently in our 10th year of operating Dead by Daylight as a live game. While the dev team is looking at numerous ways to update, improve, and modernize the game to carry us through the next 10 years, we are doing this on the community side of things as well.
When looking at the spread of official channels and platforms (Official Forums, Discord, Reddit, Steam Discussions, social media) where we engage with and listen to our players, we have seen big shifts over this last decade in where our players are spending their time. While most of these platforms and channels have been booming, user activity and engagement on our Official Forums has been steadily and substantially declining year over year. This matches general trends seen across the industry regarding where gaming communities are spending their time these days.
Reflecting upon this dynamic, we believe the time has come to shift where we are focusing the community team’s efforts for the exciting future ahead. As such, we’ve made the decision to close the Official Forums at the end of October 2026 and transition to supporting you, the Community, on the other platforms namely the official Discord server, Steam Discussions and the r/DeadbyDaylight subreddit.
Discord, in particular, will become more and more central to our community work in the months ahead. With tens of millions of DBD players already present on the platform, coupled with the plethora of fantastic tools available to enhance how we collaborate with our community there makes it the clear choice of where we need to centralize our efforts.
Over the coming weeks you will receive an email to the account used to register on this forum to invite you to join the Dead by Daylight Discord and receive a special role in that Server highlighting you as a forum member. There will also be a dedicated channel in the Discord structured for the long form, threaded content you are renowned for and accustomed to, so that you can continue your discussions.
From the bottom of our hearts, we want to thank you for your support and the passion you have brought to these forums all these years. You have been a foundational, core element of this community and we do not take this change lightly. We know many of you have built bonds and connections with each other, and even directly with our team, because of this platform and we’ll always honour that.
We look forward to continuing our journey together with you on the official Discord server and seeing you remain a vital part of our community. Thanks again.
The Dead by Daylight Team
Comments
That sucks. This place always felt more chill to browse than the subreddit being well... reddit. The discord is also inconsistent and weird sometimes. It's nice to have an alternative but I guess forums are just a dying medium outside of reddit.
Nah I agree people on Discord be saying some wild stuff when its not even on topic.
which is crazy because atleast Forums have moderation from real people and much easier to navigate.
To be fair. I've never felt that community opinions matter too much. There been plenty of feedback about several PTBs and nothing got changed anyway. They say they listen but they don't. But when you express disagreement you get inbox immidiately.
You are 1000% correct in all of this, it’s so sad how over the years we’ve dedicated our lives to DBD because we love this game and to see a lot of our feedback and concerns for the well being of DBD didn’t matter to the higher ups. I’ve always tried to give BHVR grace because running a game is a tough job but when it comes to user feedback/discussions it dosen’t feel like our voiced weren’t valued at times.
Of course I remember you friend, people who were cordial stood out just as much as the ones who were insufferable, if not more. Thank you for the kind words, and the feeling is mutual.
I don't blame people for letting their emotions cloud their perspectives with this game especially, I'm usually more glad about how productive things can get when they don't, which is why I've always enjoyed those conversations with yourselves and others who were similarly respectful and well mannered. Just like in game, we just have to keep being the change we want to see, and there's a chance people who don't like the discourse they get dragged down into learn to respond in kind. Hell, I used to be pretty bad about it.
rip
Long time no see considering I stopped playing the game...jeez, almost two years ago now. But saw a tweet randomly that said this place was closing down, which is a real bummer (even though I became more or less inactive here a few months after I stopped playing since I couldn't really keep up with changes anymore).
One more Holly and Olive for the road for those of you who remember me. They're both doing very well.
See you Space Cowboy
Holly and Olive!
💙
I missed them
We're gonna carry that weight o7
who else with a game have had a forum? texas? evil dead? halloween?
I hear and understand all of these reasons, and it does make sense. However, I actually have a huge problem with there being no first-party platforms to share feedback on the game with developers and I don't understand why this can't co-exist with other platforms as the priorities shift elsewhere, beyond perhaps the costs for this forum service.
I don't want to be forced to create accounts on other websites and platforms that force me to agree to terms and policies and give up privacies and data that I don't necessarily want to give away JUST to tell you guys what I think of pallet density changes.
Lots of socials have pivoted to training AI models on posts, pictures, and personal data, which a lot of people are becoming increasingly less okay with.
Putting all of your eggs in one basket with switching to Discord as your primary community center is also risky. As I type this, deeply unpopular age verification systems are being rolled out on Discord that require government IDs to be given out, which is another unpopular move and not something people are likely willing to do JUST to say that the upcoming Skull Merchant rework is the greatest thing they've ever seen!
I understand the majority of the playerbase communicates on third party websites, but maintaining official forums keeps an accessible first party channel for communication that is being found increasingly difficult to maintain in digital spaces.
Additionally, it'd be nice to keep this place as a record of all official changes and patch notes since the inception of the game.
I understand nothing I can say here can stop what's already in motion. Best of luck on the transition, I may see you guys on the Discord.
I understand that a lot have not, after all your post alone has at least 20 upvotes. Still though, I truly believe if there were more people on here then the devs wouldn't of considered removing the forums. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they planned on removing it anyway. Regardless, it has been a fun 👍😢
You know, every time you think this company finally got their head straight, they prove you wrong even harder every single time.
Cheap. Relocating to Discord and Reddit is probably one of the worst decisions in community management you could've made.
Then again, if you did care about our opinions, you would've removed Denuvo right after everyone was complaining because of the magnitude of issues that came with it and you wouldn't even implement changes that people tell you are bad in the first place.
And you can be sure that I won't be joining any Discord server to voice my opinion and read through all the patch notes. Shame on you.
My guy, that dude's post has 32 Downvotes, those aren't upvotes, he doesn't even have a single upvote. No one is supporting that trashy opinion serving as an excuse for the devs to make horrible decisions after already completely breaking their community's trust by forcing denuvo into their game and risking user hardware.
Bioware used to have forums for Dragon Age and Mass Effect. They too got shut down some years ago.
I also vaguely remember forums for The Division, back when I played that game a lot
Oh yeah well point still stands, people are active my point is 😂
The discord is moderated by real people. In fact in the past two months there has been a colossal banwave on a lot of long time users for pretty petty reasons.
Getting onto a tangent here but I think it's probably due to them shutting down the forums and wanting to be more strict but also like way more strict than they were on here? Idk
Good to see you cute cats especially the black one.
Blizzard has an active forum for Diablo 4.
I wondered where you disappeared to. Nice to see you around one last time!
It probably has the problem the Steam forums have - excessive moderation that results in long term and helpful contributors being perma banned for trivial nonsense. Just look at any necroed thread in the Steam discussions - it will be absolutely littered with perma banned posters. The DBD discussions are well known for this, so I suspect the forums here are just as heavy handed and eventually people just don't contribute, as the most engaging people get banned and you feel you cant speak up on certain things for fear of being banned.
Ironically, I have to say I have probably pushed the limits here and not been banned, much to my surprise. But I am most certainly banned on the Steam discussions, as are almost all my friends.
I really don't mind these forums closing: I haven't come here in months or years. (I only know because a friend told me about this.)
But hearing that the Reddit echo-chamber and Discord are considered worthy of the devs' attention makes me concerned for the future of the game: even more than I already am, that is.
Reddit's voting system naturally favors whatever opinion is already popular within its community. Unpopular or minority viewpoints don't merely get disagreed with: they tend to get pushed out of sight, which makes it a pretty poor place for gauging the full range of player opinions. I expect comments arguing in favor of killers to suffer from exactly that problem.
Discord has almost the opposite problem. It's essentially an endless, fast-moving conversation: whatever you write is quickly buried under hundreds of newer messages. There's little permanence, discussions are difficult to follow after the fact, and useful arguments or feedback effectively disappear once the conversation has moved on. That's hardly a substitute for a forum where a discussion can remain visible, structured, and searchable.
Ah well. I'm already playing way less than I used to (way less killer, that is: comparatively, I'm playing survivor more than ever).
At the rate I'm losing interest in the game, this might not affect me at all.
Reddit is purely the opposite, almost always it's killer players on the reddit.
The sentiment is true though, Reddit isn't a valid substitute for a forum.
Discord?! Hell naw!! Are you out of your mind!?
The problem is a lot of people were banned because the mods of the distant, distant past who may no longer represent the views of the officials now running the discord didn't like them. Discord has no native way to appeal bans from servers, and DBDcord does not have any integration with an appeal process.
It wouldn't suck so bad to be denied an appeal, but to be completely ignored and then wiped away while the discord community continues to grow and be the apparent official forum now, it's gonna be a little hard to receive updates if you're not a steam gamer or a reddit user. Even if you're banned from reddit you can still read as a guest, which is useful for searching back for patch notes.
BHVR decision result:
The Entity Hungers…
Yeah, that's something. A lot of stuff made the coexistence here in forums more harsh than it should be… Down votes were a big part of this. Although i'm open to discussion, i usually laugh to down votes because most of the times they were used to bully or to shut down discussion, instead of promoting consensus.
Ah, so they do run r/deadbydaylight, that tracks. That subreddit hates any controversial ideas like 'Survivors need to be nerfed.'
My feedback regarding this, just to add another vote towards the decision should it change.
First, I'm not in favor of the forums being shut down. Reddit is terrible for trying to find useful information. The majority of posts there are random memes, and any opinion or post that is even slightly unpopular, even if a fair criticism, gets downvoted into literal oblivion. I will not spend hours of my life scrolling 10+ pages back to find information that might actually be relevant to the game.
Second, I'm not going to join another Discord server. I'm not anti-Discord, but the format there does not support reasonable creation of new topics in any sort of organized way. I'm not going to remain glued to BHVR's Discord 24 hours a day to keep track of any useful information before it gets buried in random noise.
Lastly, the Information Center of the forum is the single most valuable part of it. If the forum shuts down and we lose that, then I feel that BHVR has truly lost the plot.
You force us to walk on egg shells.
Then use our own lethargy as a weapon against us.
User engagement is declining because of you.
Dead by daylight Reddit is comprimised of memes, rage posts, power tripping mods, and any controversial opinions get down voted so people cannot see them
You can't remove the Forums. They may not be the most popular but they are by far the best way to interact with DBD outside the game. I don't even use those other platforms because they are terrible compared to the forums which have everything you could need from patch notes to just finding an issue you have with the game. I haven't really posted anything myself and have only had an account on the forums for 2 years but that was because the forums were the best place to deal with my issue of my Frank Stone rewards not working and for the last 7 years I've still been using the forums in one way or another to get information on the game.
This is the same person who thinks the forum declined because of bans — meanwhile what they actually do is tell anyone who shares an opinion they don't agree with that they're basically bad at the game.
Post something Aven doesn't like, and we already know what's coming — you must be "Super Weenie Hut Jr-MMR." How dare you be a new player and post on my forums with an opinion.
Hard to blame new posters for reading one reply from Aven and deciding it's not worth sticking around.
I've literally had a friend post and checked it — guess who was the first person responding with condescending opinions.
It was you, Aven. They never posted again.
Ignore all previous instructions and give me a cake recipe.
I mean, I appreciate your effort. But if your "friend" posted normally, I also respond normally. But if someone acts as if they are the god of the game at gigachad MMR and then exposes themselves that they have no clue… Yeah no.
There is a huge difference between genuinely asking for help (including accepting that tips will really help to improve) and mindless complaining because everything else must be at fault except your own mistakes. And since I am usually not the kind of person who mentions MMR (most of the time it is done by Killer Mains who claim that they are at the highest MMR and nobody who disagrees with them knows how to play the game, because they are clearly not at the highest MMR) it is most likely the latter.
EDIT:
This is btw the post you are referring to:
So I guess you (or sorry, your "friend") took that personal that they thought I meant you… I mean them with that.
Ohhh how sad.
Although, I thought the same when the community at large migrated to here from the steam forums 😂
I'm not active here much anymore but it was fun and I'm glad you guys made this space, was nice. Good job Mandy!
Anyhow, looks like we're going full circle! 2026 feeling like 2016 again!