Aside from David King's story, it also features a tale about The Twins, a pair of 17th century conjoined twins (in case you'd forgotten what game we were talking about). David King is already a fleshed out character, and so his sexuality will be a part of him, but not everything there is to know about him, according to Peanits.Īs for the future, with the ice broken, "it'll be a lot easier to approach these subjects up front and/or in more subtle ways," they said.ĭevotion is Dead by Daylight's 11th Tome, and released on Thursday. They also noted that new characters don't typically come with much backstory, so establishing their sexuality right away might overemphasize it. And regarding suggestions that a new character would have been better, Peanits said that putting the game's first gay character behind a DLC paywall could have been considered "promoting pride for a profit," as some players also suggested. Regarding David King's past, "people often learn things about themselves as time goes on," they said. Over on the game's official forums, Dead by Daylight community manager Peanits elaborated on some of the decisions. For that reason I really hate this 'well he wasn't gay before so I don't like him now' argument because that happens to us in real life." I have to let people find out im gay on their own or tell them myself every time I switch jobs or meet new friends, and it's always unnerving when I'm anticipating their reaction to confirming my orientation. Gay people don't even just come out once. We don't pop out of the womb and have everyone understand that we're gay. My point is it's hard to call this tokenism because this happens in real life to almost every gay person. " Tome lore is probably going to be a coming out story, something I can relate to and something I'm sure a lot of other gay men would feel represented by. "I'm a gay dude, I've had four girlfriends," the player said. One player said that they think others are primarily uncomfortable accepting that an established character isn't who they assumed he was. Celebratory posts ("As someone who has been a David main for years, this makes me feel pure bliss") and counterpoints are scattered throughout the Reddit thread, too. Some of the posts in the now closed thread on the Dead by Daylight subreddit fit that description, although a lot of the player criticism is more along the lines of the "corny pandering" comment. The rest of the negative reaction broadly comes from people and pundits who reject not just the idea of representation, but the identities being represented themselves, and took the announcement as a cue for outraged soapboxing.
The developer announced that the new David King story will establish that he identifies as gay, not just that he's gay.
That would indeed be weird, but it isn't the case. "Corny pandering honestly."Ī number of negative or confused reactions also came from people who weren't aware that the announcement coincided with a new David King story-or weren't aware that Dead by Daylight contained backstories at all, like me about an hour ago-and therefore thought that the developer consulted with GaymerX just to write a blog post which states that a character is gay. Like I'm gay and I'm not saying gay men can't be hypermasculine fighting addicts but it just feels sooo out of place," said one player. "He's literally a stereotypical British chav who'd probably brag about his success with women in pubs. Some would have preferred that a new character had been introduced, with one argument being that it isn't impossible to think that David King was chosen at random as a token gay character, given his existing backstory. Other fans felt the announcement was tacky, pandering, or didn't go far enough.