Rye

10.11.2025 - The Game that Stole a Decade of my Life

This blog post contains some mention and discussion of self-harm (no cutting or suicide attempts).

I'm sure everyone has that one game they absolutely loathe giving any amount of time to. Whether it's a game that started out well but went down the drain as it went on, a game that squeezed you of your money through microtransaction BS until you finally had enough, whatever the case. That game for me is Dead by Daylight.

Released in 2016 by Behaviour Interactive, Dead by Daylight had me latched on before it was even out. I preordered it, and even got to participate in its beta before the launch. From literal day one, I was hooked, and before I quit for good earlier this year I managed to accrue a staggering 8,381.7 hours into the damn thing on Steam. For nearly a decade, basically any time I had free time, it would be spent pouring my soul into this forsaken game for over nine years. It is one of the biggest regrets in my life.

To aptly describe Dead by Daylight's playing experience, it would only need one word. Misery. The whole game is revolved around trying to make the other team as miserable as possible in order to win, through whatever means. Fun and gimmicky playstyles and builds exist, yes, but they are nowhere near the level of effectiveness as the vile strategies that make up the community's meta. And even then, if you go out of your way to play as carefree as possible, the other players will always rage on in spite of it. Dead by Daylight's community is on par with League of Legend's with how toxic and miserable the people playing it are. Players who are tired and burnt out but have nowhere else to go, so they hop onto the same game they always do. If the match goes their way, they will be sore winners. If the match doesn't go their way, they will give up and rage before moving onto the next one. Almost every regular DBD player is like this, including myself.

I cannot blame my anger issues entirely on Dead by Daylight, but to say it didn't exacerbate them would be nothing short of a lie. When things went poorly, I'd lash out. I'd "scream", making guttural noises and yells at the lowest volume possible. I'd bite my fingers or punch myself in the forehead as an outlet. I don't think you need to read that twice to know how unhealthy that is, but it's what I did. Over and over again. All because I was so sucked into this game's miserable vaccum that I could not escape for so long. Like a soulsucking office job, clocking in and out everyday, multiple times a day until finally I had enough. Earlier this year, after quitting and coming back over and over again, I pulled the trigger for good after the disasterous release of their Walking Dead collaboration. Despite promising a quality of life initiative that was going to fix everything wrong with the game, despite the hyped up Five Nights at Freddy's collab a few months prior, this update only broke things worse than ever before. Followed up with their attempted livestream with Chandler Riggs that was so mishandled and disrespectful that it turned the entire community against them in a tide of backlash I haven't seen in ages.

And from what I've seen peeking back in, it's only gotten worse. Another new Killer that released so overtuned that no one was playing Survivor, a failed anti-tunnelling update that just made everything worse for Killer that they had to revert from the live update, and more. And I'm glad, honestly. This bitter, spiteful part of me that exists in me now wants nothing more than DBD to fail for good. To watch the game crumble from afar and smile in revenge. But, some part of me hopes that DBD does get better, somehow. Or if not, that another game like it will finally rise up and do what it couldn't. Whatever happens, though, I will no longer be participating. I will be watching, and seeing how everything unfolds from afar. I cannot let this horrible game get its clutches on me again, and I hope my sheer disdain for it keeps those close to me away from it so that I am not sucked in by temptation again, so that I can heal and find something better for me now.

There's a video by a user named The Last Match of Dead by Daylight I Ever Played by Magpie which appeared in my YouTube recommended while I was thinking of what to do for my first blog, like a calling card. If you want a different person's perspective on it, which also happens to line up a lot with my own feelings and experience, please give it a watch. It's only 8 and a half minutes long.

-Rye