Unkillable: inside Dead by Daylight's incredible decade of scares

Published: July 10, 2026

"Ten years ago today, where was Dead by Daylight?" I ask Creative Director, Dave Richard. He smiles. "We were going around crazy, trying to get all of the features we wanted in as a last little crunch before the big release. We were finalizing achievements, still polishing some lore text, wondering if we should weaponize the Survivors with kicks when they were on the hook, or using flash grenades to save people, which we decided we wouldn't be doing. We were straight out of beta; it was very, very early. It was the first time that players played the game, and we saw that 'oh! We think it's going to work, people are interested.'"

Fast-forward to June 14: Richard is standing in front of a room full of Dead by Daylight fans, revealing all of the game's tenth anniversary content. There's The Life Road, DBD's new, Native American-inspired chapter, and confirmation that Terrifier's Art the Clown will join the Killer roster. There are Diablo 4, The Walking Dead, and Scooby Doo collaborations, and, perhaps the biggest reveal, a colossal, game-changing foundational update that enhances character models and map audio/visuals, paving the way for another ten years of DBD. Things, then, have certainly changed.

Dead by Daylight is, in many ways, reminiscent of Digital Extremes' Warframe. It also launched to largely mixed reviews, but has seen an impressive, resilient growth curve. "I remember Gamespot, for example, gave us a six, and we were like, 'aww,'" Richard recalls. "But it was kind of to be expected; [DBD] was very indie, very strange; and kind of an unbalanced, crazy scenario. Then, a few years later, they gave us a nine out of ten, yay! They updated it because they were like, 'hey, now this makes sense.'"

The game's trajectory has generally been an upwards one; there are the usual peaks and troughs as content ebbs and flows, but generally Dead by Daylight's growth is a developer's dream come true. A steady trend upwards, consistent new concurrent player peaks - what Behaviour has achieved is nothing short of a miracle in the modern live-service climate. In 2026, DBD sees between 70k and 105k players log in every single day - and that's just on PC.

How did we get here? How did a seemingly 'niche" horror game experience become one of the biggest online multiplayer games? That's what I'm here to explore, while asking one overarching question: why should I play DBD in 2026?

Dead by Daylight is an extremely universal fantasy.

José Ramos, DBD Executive Producer

Back in 2016, there was nothing quite like DBD on the market. Asymmetric games are a nightmare when it comes to balance - something both Richard and Executive Producer José Ramos have grappled with over the years - and the horror genre, while colossal, is very much suited to a specific type of player. In some ways DBD is a horror fan's playable paradise, but to those outside the genre, it lacks the visual spectacle and high-octane action of shooters like Counter-Strike or Valorant, or MOBAs like League of Legends and Dota.

I ask the duo about whether or not, when the game launched, Behaviour had sought to embrace that niche, versus aiming to please the wider multiplayer market. "The strategy is to build a fun experience that we're passionate about, but one that also isn't in the Red Sea - the place where all of the other games are being built," Richard says. When it comes to the horror space as a whole, while it's still considered by some to be a "niche," Richard stresses that the genre "is massively consumed - and even more today. People love the social experience of being scared together, and that's something that we discovered very early while designing this game. Being scared together then talking about your experience is the true potential of a game like Dead by Daylight. It's just like a movie where you're being scared together."

While Ramos wasn't there for those early days - he joined Behavior in 2022 - he says that "Dead by Daylight is an extremely universal fantasy. There are not many games that you can fully understand in just a few words. DBD is one of [those games]."

Beyond just the gameplay, however, both DBD's Killer and Survivor rosters feature some of the biggest names in the history of horror media. Michael Myres, Freddy Krueger, and now Jason Voorhees are all playable as Killers, while Survivors include Resident Evil's Leon Kennedy, Alien's Ellen Ripley, and, erm, Nicolas Cage? I did say 'biggest names.'

Licensed Killers and borrowing from other IPs have become a central part of Dead by Daylight; as a Castlevania fan I can tear Survivors asunder as Dracula (or The Dark Lord, as he's known in-universe), or I can channel my inner Matt Mercer and cause chaos at Dungeons and Dragons villain, Vecna. "It's part of our DNA to create pitches, sign licenses, and transform them into games," Richard says. The game's first licensed chapter was, aptly, Halloween, adding Michael Myres and Laurie Strode, and he recalls that it was "very difficult to get as [we were] unproven." Halloween, then, was a "first badge of validation from the horror industry, saying 'this is a legit universe that you're building.'"

I've spoken at length, however, about my general disinterest in crossover content - Fortnite, Overwatch, and myriad other live service titles have lost their identities over the years, trading out solid ideas for ill-fitting collaborations and a quick injection of cash. More generally with Dead by Daylight, I've always felt myself more drawn to its original characters - the woeful Artist, flamboyant Trickster, and even the ever-blinking, jump-scaring Nurse.

These characters themselves have become iconic; they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the greatest faces in horror history, and they don't slouch by comparison. Dead by Daylight released with just three Killers: The Trapper, The Wraith, and The Hillbilly; now it's an expansive universe that includes comics, spinoff games, and, as revealed during the tenth anniversary showcase, a movie.

"What we wanted to prove with those three original characters was that Dead by Daylight was more than just slasher: it's about the whole horror subgenre, and that everything has its place," Richard says. "We started with The Trapper, and yes, he's the slasher archetype: grounded, using tools to maim, torture, and kill. The second was the hillbilly genre, and the chainsaws as power was really interesting and visceral for us to put in. Then The Wraith, a personal favorite of mine, was all about the supernatural aspect and the folkloric monsters. They prove that many genres can exist within Dead by Daylight.

"It's amazing to see that our original characters can stand side-by-side with these legends and are becoming legends of their own," Richard beams. "We're at ten years, that's amazing, but we're barely getting started. We have way more in the tank."

We have seen character launches slow down over the past couple of years, however. It's no secret that Dead by Daylight has had a rough patch, with its core systems seemingly giving way underneath the weight of its content. The result was a much-needed refocus; new additions and chapters were placed to the side as the team worked to restabilize the core DBD experience. The self-dubbed quality of life initiative has largely been a success; while there were some rather ugly holes in the All-Kill Comeback Trickster's Delusion map, Behaviour has been quick to implement fixes. Ramos tells me the team is fixing more bugs at a faster rate, but admits that things are "not where [Behaviour] wants them to be."

"The TLDR version is: happy with the progress, not where we want to be. I think that's a very, very short version of it. Part of it is some elements which are extremely boring - production pipelines and things like that where we want to be a bit more disciplined in terms of how ready we are in advance of the release, things like that. We are bringing a bit of 'discipline.' It's also about making sure we have enough people in the right place to bring enough quality-of-life effort.

"We opened the BetaHub for more public-facing ability to report bugs, and honestly that's been super helpful," he continues. "We haven't shared data about this yet, but the amount of bugs that we have solved essentially in those past six months or so is so much superior to what it was previously, but also the amount of bugs that we are bringing with each new release is reducing quite strongly.

"Are we where we want to be? No. I think that is true for many games, but that's no excuse," he says. "It's still something that's very, very high on our priority list. I think it would be ill-advised almost to hope or aim at perfection - that's a lost fight at every level. But there are bugs that we know have been frustrating to players for a long time - some even bring accessibility issues. We're not underestimating the frustration. We are lucky enough to have a great amount of players with a number of hours in this game, and the more time you spend in the game, the more you're going to feel those little things that can be frustrating. I feel like, with the Killer bugs, which were one of the biggest elements of frustration, we are making good progress. But we see the list; we see the backlog. We still have a way to go, so it's not going to stop being a focus for us."

The future, however, looks bright for Dead by Daylight. There's the aforementioned ground-up overhaul, that reinvigorates the game's gory visuals, and truly brings its Survivors to life. Behavior is opening up creative modding, and slowly but surely adding voiceover for its older character roster. Richard jokes about "guns, boats, and flying sharks," and a part of me doesn't think he's actually kidding. Post-tenth anniversary reveals, its player count has hit a new peak. Not bad for a ten-year-old game.

There are currently "over 400 people working on DBD," Ramos tells me. "Our past two years have been our most successful years ever, back-to-back. Getting to ten years in such a healthy state is a privilege. There are very, very few games in the market that have had this chance. Being able to not only do that, but feel like we're just getting started, is - what more can you ask for? It's the perfect situation."

We offer the ultimate horror experience.

Dave Richard, DBD Creative Director

"At the start of this interview I asked what you were doing ten years ago today, before Dead by Daylight launched," I respond. "Ten years later: why should people play Dead by Daylight in 2026?" Richard doesn't miss a beat. "Because of the guns and the boats - I thought I was clear!" We devolve into laughter.

"There's something I'd like to mention, which sometimes feels counterintuitive because, as soon as you are a PvP game, the topics of competitiveness and toxicity all exist," Ramos says. "But I will actually argue that the wholesomeness and positivity that exists within this community is incredible. I know it might not sound like the first thing you should think of, but there's such an incredible element of participation - fan art, cosplay, tournaments. I don't know so many games that have achieved that. I don't want to make comparisons, but I've worked on different titles before, and when I joined DBD and saw the percentage of people playing with friends, I was amazed. It's such an incredible social experience, and I think that's what makes it quite special."

"Genuinely the game today is more interesting than it was," Richard continues. "It's much deeper, its community is super interesting, there is so much to discover, and what is about to happen to the game will refresh it for new players to be able to experience a modern version of Dead by Daylight. I believe that all of the choices we are making right now - for that visual update, for the future of Dead by Daylight - the immersiveness, the horror, is closer to our pre-release in 2016 vision and dream than everything in-between.

"I do believe we offer the ultimate horror experience, and that's why players should play."