Dead by Daylight is a fun concept and starts out entertaining enough but the many bugs, balancing issues, toxic community and a seemingly oblivious/incompetent development team keep me from recommending it to any new players.

The game's concept is fun enough: Play as one of four young adults desperately trying to repair five generators to open the gates and escape from a murderous stalker taken from slasher film tropes. Or, play as the killer and hunt those kids foolish enough to stumble across your lair. As you gain experience, you can buy perks and gain access to items to help you escape or kill. When you start the game, it's a fun, heady experience. Unfortunately, like a piece of fruit-striped gum, the initial rush is quickly gone.

Technical bugs abound, from minor glitches like non-working scoreboards and graphical glitches to moderate issues like broken perks to major issues like all of your game progress being eliminated (the devs recommend you make your own manual save copies) or "infinite loading screens" where the game locks up. Of course, sometimes it just takes 2-5 minutes to load so you can waste a bit of time on nothing before determining if you're bugged or not. Even if you weren't bugged, a team mate may be and they drop out leaving you down survivors before the game even starts. Other issues exist in development choices: the matchmaking is simply terrible and often sticks your Rank 20 newbie with Rank 1-5 opponents leaving you hopelessly outclassed. Region matching is also terrible where the game can't find matches for you -- I am better off seeking a game in Ontario rather than my home region of Chicago because the game will just hang. Then there are numerous balances issues and exploits that go unresolved.

Frustratingly, through this, the developers appear to be more interested in pushing out paid DLC than fixing bugs -- and for the "Different teams!" excuse camp, if you have critical bugs but lots of DLC makers, then it's time to allocate your hiring resources differently. They also rely heavily on streamers to promote the game and shower their favorite people with gifts to get good press rather than taking care of their product as recent reviews show. Famously, one developer recently said on Twitter that exploiting streamers would not be punished because they rely on them for promotion. When they do try to fix balance issues, they frequently overshoot. There's more survivors than killers so "fixes" tend to be heavy nerfs to killer perks or buffs to survivor abilities in order to quiet the loudest voices.

The game does have promise and is initially rewarding before all the other issues wear away at it. If you can play with friends, it helps a lot just because most things are more fun with friends. But I couldn't, in good conscience, tell anyone to spend $15-$20 on the game (plus another $20 in DLC) in its current state. Right now, I'm not sure if it'll ever get there.

Dead by Daylight is a fun concept and starts out entertaining enough but the many bugs, balancing issues, toxic community and a seemingly oblivious/incompetent development team keep me from recommending it to any new players. The game's concept is fun enough: Play as one of four young adults desperately trying to repair five generators to open the gates and escape from a murderous stalker taken from slasher film tropes. Or, play as the killer and hunt those kids foolish enough to stumble across your lair. As you gain experience, you can buy perks and gain access to items to help you escape or kill. When you start the game, it's a fun, heady experience. Unfortunately, like a piece of fruit-striped gum, the initial rush is quickly gone. Technical bugs abound, from minor glitches like non-working scoreboards and graphical glitches to moderate issues like broken perks to major issues like all of your game progress being eliminated (the devs recommend you make your own manual save copies) or "infinite loading screens" where the game locks up. Of course, sometimes it just takes 2-5 minutes to load so you can waste a bit of time on nothing before determining if you're bugged or not. Even if you weren't bugged, a team mate may be and they drop out leaving you down survivors before the game even starts. Other issues exist in development choices: the matchmaking is simply terrible and often sticks your Rank 20 newbie with Rank 1-5 opponents leaving you hopelessly outclassed. Region matching is also terrible where the game can't find matches for you -- I am better off seeking a game in Ontario rather than my home region of Chicago because the game will just hang. Then there are numerous balances issues and exploits that go unresolved. Frustratingly, through this, the developers appear to be more interested in pushing out paid DLC than fixing bugs -- and for the "Different teams!" excuse camp, if you have critical bugs but lots of DLC makers, then it's time to allocate your hiring resources differently. They also rely heavily on streamers to promote the game and shower their favorite people with gifts to get good press rather than taking care of their product as recent reviews show. Famously, one developer recently said on Twitter that exploiting streamers would not be punished because they rely on them for promotion. When they do try to fix balance issues, they frequently overshoot. There's more survivors than killers so "fixes" tend to be heavy nerfs to killer perks or buffs to survivor abilities in order to quiet the loudest voices. The game does have promise and is initially rewarding before all the other issues wear away at it. If you can play with friends, it helps a lot just because most things are more fun with friends. But I couldn't, in good conscience, tell anyone to spend $15-$20 on the game (plus another $20 in DLC) in its current state. Right now, I'm not sure if it'll ever get there.