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
well this wasn't on my 2026 bingo card.
So where is PTB feedback going to go? Discord has threads but I don't think they can hold nearly as well as a forum server, and I think each 'thread' has a character count per post. Not to mention the general style that Discord is, someone could post something and depending how active that channel is, their post can be pushed off screen quite quickly like a twitch chat and no one is going to scroll up to read it if dozens of people are posting at the same time.
So, do we have a specific date for this?
October 30th?
Yeah, Discord really isn't the kind of place for detailed feedback.
And since the "reason" for closing the forum is a matter of sheer activity over quality, I think it's safe to say they aren't interested in detailed feedback and are merely trying to have less places to check.
There's also the running theory that it is partly due to major popular complain-threads (such as the ones for a Switch 2 version or responses to BHVR staff posts/streams) will essentially be unable to exist for long before getting buried then quietly closed.
I’d rather drink bleach than join the cancer that is the discord server 💀💀💀
Don't worry, we are working on preserving the threads.
Hey, good to see you too!!
Oh, and yeah, I never had any luck with getting back my Legacy 3's back 🙄😂 I was tempted to try make another fuss, pleading for them to resolve it for those that lost it, as the 10th anniversary was upcoming (now past). But, I think I'm done embarrassing myself regarding that haha. (I'll always have a little grudge on BHVR for not resolving this though! 😉)
I remember you as a staunch advocate for Freddy reworks/buffs or I think even wanting to bring back OG Freddy?? And I believe you used to talk about old DBD a lot too! I imagine you're still campaigning for Freddy reworks/buffs even now haha. Again, good to see you too, friend!
Lots of familiar names just in this post alone, will be a shame to see it all gone, poof just like that. Ah well.
Ah, such a shame they didn't give you your legacy back, I do recall how involved you were in those discussions. I must admit I still believe legacy should just be given to everyone, which I remember we discussed the pros of cons of, and it is indeed wild to think those discussions will be nothing but memories a month from now.
Hard to wrap my head around it, it really is.
And yep, proud to say that I remain dedicated to my beloved OG Freddy until the very end! I'm hoping the upcoming sandbox and modding stuff might finally be the solution to this campaign of mine, if they allow modded licensed content that is. But we will have to wait and see.
Really glad to have seen you again before this forum goes down, friend <3
This corner of the DBD community we had there will be sorely missed.
Usually when I get news that I have an immediately negative reaction to, it makes a little more sense to me as I take the time to process it rationally, but this actually makes less sense to me now than last week.
I mean obviously it's in part a money issue, but anyone who has existed on the internet long enough knows how relatively resource light operating a forum like this is.
For example, I am part of a community on a sports forum that spun off from an official forum, set up by one person and funded by him and occasional user donations, and moderated by well established community members. This is not just a small one, either, with thousands of users (hundreds active at any time) and many features. It has been active (and evolving) for over 20 years now. It's not a real burden for a company like BHVR.
My tinfoil hat thought here is that this was planned: the forum is the only official platform where we can have well delineated, long form discussion, and where critiques can snowball (the other platforms are more chaotic). So tamp down on it hard enough to discourage discussion over time, continuously ban people over practically nothing, then shut it down, citing "lack of engagement".
I don't imagine that whole thought is accurate, but I think at least part of it is by design. Or at least just not caring.
The DBD Discord and twitter/X are as appealing as a malfunctioning CDC hot room would be to an immunocompromised person.
The subreddit is slightly less unappealing, but still not a replacement for the style of discussion that take place here.
You guys have got to be ######### kidding me 😂 what a joke of a team. Maybe your forum failed because you never actually interacted with any single person here in a meaningful way other than fluff? Just another L in the books for BHVR.
You would have had more users on this forum if you made it easier to use.
I would post more often if my comments/posts didn't require approval to post (often with multiple weeks delay). It also sounds like many regular users have been banned.
It's clear that criticism of the game and BHVR isn't allowed despite the large number of longstanding unfixed bugs, poor server quality and bizarre decisions (thinking back to OCE servers being ruined in 2024).
The alternative options suggested are terrible for leaving feedback:
Like others have mentioned, the forums are also an excellent reference spot for all patch notes.
For quite a few years I have felt like the game has been moving in a direction I don't like (for example, 2v8 existing and ruining 4v1), and this decision to shutter the forums affirms my continued decision to not spend money on the game (since Lara DLC release).
Please don't get rid of the forums it's not perfect but the reddit is awful the mods on there are nasty very rude to people so many screenshots an videos of awful expriences with people. Also the downvote system on reddit is gonna burry anything constructive for posts of memes an people arguing.
Might be better to have a new reddit run by behavior as the one we have is not good i've never encountered mods as so rude as whoever runs the reddit.
All I'll say is this is awful, just terrible
hi guys, jumping back into this thread to mention that it looks like the author of DeadByQueue (the website that provides map chance and queue time data from API) has created a mirror of the forums. https://forums.deadbyqueue.com/
when the torrent gets created, i highly recommend people save it to help preserve the contents of the forum. i'll also be seeding when i get the chance.
thank you to @Gajemt /CutestLoaf for your work!
Love this and thank you to @Gajemt and everyone else that has been putting in the time/effort to archive the forums. This really highlights how much the forums means to a portion of the community that archiving it was such a priority and how everyone felt it needed to be done asap. It's really sad that BHVR is just throwing it all away like it's nothing.
This is a really bad decision on your part
I'm very sad to see the forum go. I actually learned about diminishing returns from this forum because if comments on it exists in the actual game, it is well hidden from an average gamer. I also learned about basekit off hook protection (previously I ran BT as someone who came from IDV because I thought once you were unhooked you got nothing). I am unsure about how well I will be able to keep up with everything DBD has going on because Discord and Reddit are hard to navigate compared to this forum and simply full of clutter. My opinion on Steam forums is that it is a weird way to access conversation, and the convenience aspect of the other two is lost. I just like this forum honestly. It taught and continues to teach me a lot.
Wow, just took a look.
That is great - you can see all your own comments with the pictures :-)
The only one of those that isn't completely useless for feedback excludes console players.
I really wish BHVR had just stuck to Steam and left the rest of us alone. If the game doesn't need to run well on console, if the controls for killers don't need to be decent on console, then the game doesn't need to be released on console. Playing DbD on Switch and PS4 has taught me I can still be disappointed even when I expect to be let down. You didn't mention Twitter, but that's the only other place I've tried leaving feedback, and console concerns get shouted down EVERY TIME, like how dare I want the game to function if I won't sell my first born for a new gaming PC.
One of the reasons I stopped posting on the forums is because I felt like BHVR really didn't care. For instance, did the Skilled Huntress achievemt bug on PlayStation ever get fixed? It's been years, now.
The Cyberpunk forums are still open. CDPR just cares more about their fans than BHVR.
Shutting down because of the Denuvo mess up and they don't want to read the replies anymore. That's called passing the buck and that's sad. It's not the end of the era, it's basically putting your fingers in your ears and going lalalalalala.
That's so sad to hear. I love the forums, I love the discussions and love to check stuff out. Even days later I know I can find some discussion still going on and not be buried with the next topic like on the othere communites.
I doubt, I will check out twitter. Reddit I do, but nothing is the same.
It's a loss.
This is so awful.
I do not want to use reddit, like, ever, considering reddit has such a ######### community in almost every single subreddit, and knowing this games community, I doubt it'll be any different.
Reddit users will literally downvote you for making a typo.
How will 'constructive' feedback even be seen by the devs? I doubt you guys will scroll through every single post.
The same goes for discord. Too many messages, too much at once. Nobody will read it.
You're just trying to take the lazy route. At least in this forum you were somewhat forced to read and react to feedback, as opposed to discord and reddit…
We are still here? What's the current deal? I think they said they were shutting it all down on the 1st of October?
Will the patch notes continue to be available on the website or will they also be moving to Reddit/ Discord only?
Mandy wrote in this post:
we don’t know the react date afaik
But at least they have given us a bit more than a month to catch up with the news
The Steam forums are AWFUL. Every game's discussion section seems to be flooded with utter cretins posting endless DIS GAME IS WOKE!!1 garbage. The Silent Hill Townfall discussion board is infested with them and there doesn't seem to be any moderation.
hello hi this is kinda random but I dm'd you but idk if you saw it.
It’s clearly a mistake to centralize your feedback hub on external services like Reddit and Discord. How will you get information to your users if those services undergo major changes for the worse or become unavailable for an extended period?
Since you’re releasing skins like crazy to rake in money, maintaining your own website shouldn’t be a problem, right? Or is it just that you don’t want a record of any controversial incidents to remain in Google’s Web Archive in the form of a forum URL?
Great. Just great.
Neither Discord nor reddit can provide a sorted, discussion-focused, forum-like structure.
And steam discussions are limited to one platform.
Just great.
To make it very clear, my response is towards the ones who have made this decision, not Mandy personally.
I don't understand the need to switch to 3rd parties, when 2 of them have been hacked not too long ago. Discord is fighting to stay afloat in a lot of countries since it is being banned unless it takes actions. At this rate it wouldn't surprise me if BHVR fired its own employees as well and replaced them with AI. That's what corporations love, right? No humans, just money and F everyone who dared to care / want your product or wanted to give their opinion without getting censored.
You guys banned more than half of the forum regulars for some of the pettiest reasons at times, we all know, we've seen it and won't be gaslit about it. So be frank, is it that surprising that there has been a decline in members? The home button wasn't working for months. Forum bugs weren't being addressed nor fixed for long times. But it's on the members that there has been a decline. Come on now.
This forum is a place that is actually properly organised, that has an archive and doesn't rely on another company for its existence. There are no distractions or pushy notifications, just the members discussing what they want to in peace.
Steam reviews and discussions will decimate this game when one of its million bugs renders it unplayable again. As for reddit the addition of 'up voting and down voting' to the forum was a dead giveaway for where you guys wanted to go, though sadly I think that just made the forums worse and less interactive. Most stopped responding and just upvoted/downvoted posts.
I'll miss reading the patch notes and news on here, but going forward I'll rely on Otz for that instead. I refuse making new accounts for you guys when it is very probable that in a few months/years those will be shut down as well.
I'll miss the nice folks on here. Wishing all the members here the best! 🍀