During Dead by Daylight's 7th-anniversary event, a team member over at Behaviour Interactive has snuck in a little joke that might answer some common questions about developers' supposed "foot fetish" after players noticed that out of the game's original female killers, The Skull Merchant is one of the only ones that happens to be wearing shoes.
Behaviour team members were allowed to write up their own little blips of text to be included on players' loading screens during the 7th-anniversary, and a Lead Character Artist for the game named Eric wrote this one up about the "foot fetish" trend:
"No, we don't like feet; if we make more feet cosmetics it's because you like feet," the statement reads. "Supply and demand, the data doesn't lie."
Players brought attention to it on Twitter shortly after the anniversary event started.
Eric is kinda based for this pic.twitter.com/TnhzrfJReE
— Bubba Dreemurr | Comms open (@BubbaDreemurr) June 24, 2023
Players have been discussing the topic for around a year now after one user brought up what they noticed about the characters' feet on Reddit. Players in the community have even created graphs that display the disparities between the number of female killers wearing shoes, female killers not wearing shoes, and male killers on both sides of the shoe-wearing spectrum.
One player posted their graphs to Reddit. At the time the graphs were made 8 months ago, 100% of male killers had at least one skin that depicts them with shoes on. Only half of the female killers did.
Further, only 8/18 (44%) male killers have a skin without shoes, while 8/10 (80%) of female killers have at least one skin with no shoes. Just like Eric said, the data doesn't lie.
While the community has brought attention to the fact that only a couple of original female killers wear shoes, that's not to mention the various killer and survivor perks that just so happen to mention feet in one way or another.
Even The Skull Merchant isn't totally immune, despite being the only female killer to wear shoes, given that she has a perk called "Game Afoot." Also among the perks mentioning feet is Ada Wong's Low Profile, for which the picture is literally a woman's bare feet stepping out of a pair of heels.
For more Dead by Daylight news be sure to check out our dedicated section, or some of our Guides & Tutorials, just below:
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