Yeah I've been "lurking" (I don't know if that's the correct term) on the site with no account for years, from learning about CWC, and being deeply disturbed, and interested. Then the whole thing with his Mother, and I started checking in near every day to see what was happening. I eventually found this thread, and have been keeping up with it for awhile as I love the discussion, but checking last week, and finding out about Kaneki being added is what pushed me over the edge into making an account, as I've wanted too for quite awhile.
The reasoning BHVR gave is that making him a Killer was the best way they could implement his powers into the game. I don't really know anything about the series beyond the Unravel memes but apparently the "story" is that he was nabbed by the Entity after being tortured/starved so he was at the absolute peak of his nuttiness. A cursory glance at others reactions seems to suggest that a lot of fans of the series look at this alternative timeline stuff and say "yeah, that checks out" so I assume it's not that out of the realm of possibility.
Do I think he necessarily fits along with the other killers in DBD? Ehhhh, it still feels kinda weird but unfortunately the name of the game in popular multiplayer games is to mash as many properties into your platform as possible a la Fortnite and BHVR is not immune to the call of the almighty weeb dollar.
Just going off my memory, but Kaneki is very mentally disturbed in the series, and seems to have multiple personalities, but I don't know if he actually does or not, it's like a side effect of being tortured, and then at one point having his memory erased. I remember a scene in the Manga near the end where all his "personalities" sort of have a discussion/argument with each other. So it can kind of work along those lines as another layer of craziness.
I take the game very casually, and I try not to take it too seriously, I have always been a big fan of horror so even though there is a lot of DBD that is absolutely loathsome, and ridiculous to me, the huge amount of characters, and fun I have while playing sort of makes up for it. I've never played Fortnite, but I did see they put Goku in it along with Naruto, and whatever else and even though I love those franchises, I don't think they can be done justice properly just shoving them into something like Fortnite. More horror oriented franchises though I feel can work in DBD if they at least try to do them justice (shrinking the Titan characters down as skins to make them playable is an insult to them imo.), so I'm pretty open to whatever they want to add. I still think they should try to focus on other Slasher franchises though, I think Jason should always be top priority if they could get him.
I am also rather disappointed they're getting rid of the Hellraiser stuff as a Pinhead main but I know it's one of those properties where the licensing has always been... weird to say the least. I know everyone was suspecting they were gonna remove Leatherface with the TCM gaming coming out but I don't think that was much of a risk after that game kinda floundered. It is somehow still alive though and has received updates since, but I don't think the playerbase is anywhere near when it launched.
If you bought the Hellraiser stuff you get to keep it right? I don't spend much money on DBD, but at the very least I buy each Chapter as it comes out just in case something like this happens. I don't mind stuff getting removed as long as I can keep the stuff I already have.
This is a bit off topic, but sort of relevant. There's a game I've been playing on and off a long time (since 2006 maybe?) called Maplestory, and they recently removed the Jett character (Space Cowboy type character.), but they didn't just remove it (as in you can't make the character anymore.), but they completely got rid of the character, along with their storyline the whole kit, and kaboodle. Any Jett characters you may have made, and put time, and money into are completely changed into one of the other "base explorer" Classes. I haven't played Maplestory since (or at least their official server). If DBD went that far with Hellraiser or Stranger Things (I think they removed it, but brought it back?) then I'd be absolutely livid.