Most Popular Dead by Daylight Streamer: “I don’t feel safe anymore, there are too many cheaters”
The Dead by Daylight community is rocked by a hacking problem. Even the calmest of streamers can’t take it anymore.
Cheaters, hackers and scammers are a problem in any online game and Dead by Daylight is no exception. In the meantime, however, the problems have gone so far that even the biggest streamers are losing interest.
They live in constant fear of stream snipers and hackers who rob them of the fun and just want attention. Even the “good mood streamer” Otzdarva just doesn’t have fun anymore.
Who is Otzdarva? Streamer Otzdarva, sometimes called “Not_Otzdarva”, has been playing Dead by Daylight for over 4 years now. He has become the most popular streamer in this game, which is not only due to his humble nature, but also to his extremely high understanding of the game.
Whether you’re a newbie or a veteran, anyone interested in Dead by Daylight will sooner or later come across his guides, in which he analyzes the pros and cons of killers, perks, and maps. His streams in particular are often instructive, as he plays with foresight, always explains his thoughts and almost always analyzes his own mistakes immediately and in a way that is understandable.
In the Dead by Daylight community, he counts as a competent “feel good streamer” that you can watch for hours, also to learn more about the game.
on Twitter he has over 800,000 followers and the same amount on YouTube – making him one of the biggest streamers with a focus on Dead by Daylight ever.
Why isn’t he having fun anymore? The reason is quite simple: stream snipers and hackers ruining his fun. Now, whenever he streams Dead by Daylight, Otzdarva feels like stream snipers are stalking him.
Cheaters love the attention they get from streamsnipping my streams – and everyone else’s. And they do it permanently. It’s very, very annoying. Because now I have to avoid any player who looks even a little suspicious. private [Steam]-Profile? i avoid you anonymous mode? i avoid you I’ve seen you before and your name stuck in my mind? i avoid you
It’s really no fun.
The problem here is also that Otzdarva is a very ambitious person and often seeks challenges for exciting content. He has a series of “50 Win Streak” videos where he aims to get 50 wins in a row with a killer. That alone is pretty difficult, but has been repeatedly torpedoed by stream snipers and hackers in the recent past.
Why is cheating so problematic in Dead by Daylight? While cheaters (or rather “hackers”) are often fairly easy to spot in other games, this isn’t always the case in Dead by Daylight. Although there are the “obvious” cheaters here too, who fly over the map or repair generators in the course of a few seconds, many fraudsters work much more subtly.
They have a slightly increased movement speed of about 2% – 6%. This is hardly noticeable in normal gameplay, but it means that you can “loop” the killer around objects for much longer than it would actually be possible. Other hackers can constantly see the killer through solid walls, basically winning any mind game.
If scammers are reasonably clever, it is very difficult to even identify them. Otzdarva says:
Possibly even worse than these obvious scammers are the ones that do it unnoticed. Unobtrusive cheaters are these: they might see you through walls, they might move 2% faster, but they don’t make it obvious.
This is also because the killer player is already busy with many things at the same time. He must pressure four other players at once, guarding generators and planning chases ahead. There is often not enough time to keep an eye on all survivors at the same time and to unmask cheating.
Because in the turmoil it is often not even noticeable if a generator is simply repaired after 5 seconds with a hack, if you are chasing a survivor yourself at the other end of the map.
The YouTuber SupaAlf experienced such a hacker in one of his videos, who is only exposed in the end because he simply escapes from the game in the middle of the match, where he was supposed to die:
Only when the video is analyzed more closely does it become apparent that generators are dealt with far too quickly – and even then, other professionals (like Otzdarva) don’t immediately notice who the scammer is. This only becomes apparent when there is clear fraud, such as spontaneously escaping the game.
Hackers want attention and influence
But the obvious hackers are also a problem. If a survivor can fly through the map, they can “hold the game hostage”. There is no “surrender” option for the killer, so a hacker can block the game for up to 2 hours before the match ends automatically.
If the streamer doesn’t want to wait that long, they have to leave the game early – and then serve an ever-expanding penalty. Because if you leave a game prematurely, you will be penalized with an account penalty and cannot play again directly.
This gives such hackers additional power and influence: either they shut down the stream for almost 2 hours or they ensure that the streamer’s account fines increase. A “win-win situation” for hackers, while streamers despair.
Does Dead by Daylight have a hacking problem? In general, this is difficult to answer. The problem is likely to be more drastic for large streamers, as many have set themselves the goal of harassing these streamers through stream sniping and hacks in order to get attention and thus confirmation.
In addition, Dead by Daylight has a large number of perks that give additional powers to survivors or the killer. Therefore, one can often still derive a lot of cheating as “clever exploitation of the perks” and is not so skeptical at first.
However, Dead by Daylight is also repeatedly criticized for having rather lax protection systems against fraud. Especially “Easy Anti-Cheat” is often smiled at and seems to be easy to bypass.
Otzdarva hopes that the developers will finally take the fight against hackers more seriously and introduce better methods of exposing such scammers or removing them directly from the game.
Because now Otzdarva has gotten to the point where he suspects even innocent players simply because they are lucky. Whenever something “slightly strange” happens, he becomes skeptical – often rightly so, but he also often suspects innocent people. It’s just a kind of “hacker paranoia” that has built up over the last few months, sapping the spirit of one of the game’s biggest fans.
Because we know there are so many cheaters out there… now if I experience anything that’s just a little bit weird… I just don’t believe it anymore. I stop following survivors because I believe they are cheating. I record my games and then watch them again and analyze them carefully because things just don’t look right anymore. […]
And then there are people who are not scammers. They were just lucky or something crazy happened, but I immediately think they’re scammers – that’s not fair either.
Otzdarva is particularly disappointed that the developers, Behaviour, have not made any statements on this subject. He doesn’t see any improvement on the horizon and apologizes to his community – he loves the game, but currently he just doesn’t enjoy it anymore until the cheater problem is fixed.
Have you had problems with hackers in Dead by Daylight?
But some survivors also help the killer: They use a perk that is so bad that it should actually be a killer perk.
Reference-mein-mmo.de