The Evolution Of Dead By Daylight

The Evolution of Dead by Daylight

To think that “Dead by Daylight” is approaching its tenth anniversary is beyond wild. Though it may not boast the same numbers as bigger live service titles like “Fortnite” or “Warframe”, “Dead by Daylight” has amassed a colossal playerbase composed of fans from all corners of horror. But what makes the game’s current status in online gaming even crazier is how it even managed to get here in the first place.

Welcome to MojoPlays. My name is Ty, and today, we’re taking a look at how “Dead by Daylight” began and what led it to becoming a tour de force in online gaming and the world of horror.

Not to start things up with an overly extensive history lesson, but Behaviour Interactive used to be a significantly smaller studio, and it was for several years. With the exception of its first game, the PS1 platformer named “Jersey Devil”, Behaviour Interactive specialized more in licensed games when it was known as Artificial Mind & Movement. You may have played some of their games without even realizing it: “Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters”, “The Grinch”, “Scooby-Doo!: Unmasked”, “Teen Titans”, and even “Monster House” are just a small handful of the many licensed games Behaviour worked on during those days. Matheiu Cote, the Head of External Partnerships for Behaviour Interactive, even mentioned this history in an interview with us back in August 2025. Said Cote, “We had a great reputation with the developers, the licensors, the Disneys, the THQs, who else who needed games knew Behaviour. The players had no idea who we were.” This lengthy history of making licensed games would, unbeknownst to Behaviour, lay the seeds for success with DBD. But if the experience were the seeds, then the soil was a rather obscure title released all the way back in 2010.

“Naughty Bear” was arguably the studio’s most ambitious game at the time as it was exploring the concept of “reverse horror” in video games, an idea that was rarely ever entertained in video games at the time. Described as “a Saturday morning cartoon gone horribly wrong”, “Naughty Bear” tasked players with terrorizing a jolly island of colorful cotton-filled bears in various ways. Hide in bushes to observe the bears from afar, sabotage items to hinder their activities, and commit nefarious deeds to drive them to the brink of insanity. If you wanted to be among the best players, you had to become a true terror as quickly as possible to maximize your score. 

But if “Naughty Bear’s” single-player campaign was the soil, its multiplayer side was the cement, the foundation for Behaviour Interactive. Those wanting some PvP action could jump online and play different game modes based on classic deathmatch rules, Capture the Flag, and even a mode based on Golden Gun mode from the N64 classic, “GoldenEye 007”. The mode we want to draw attention to was called “Jelly Wars”. This was an asymmetrical multiplayer mode where three players were tasked with gathering ingredients while a fourth player hunted them down as Naughty Bear. Although, this mode was rudimentary in its design as Naughty could be easily bullied in most situations. Kinda hard for the lone wolf to defend itself from a team of three. Nevertheless, there was an idea for something decent, something that could become bigger than it was here.

Behaviour Interactive continued working as a contract developer, making games with a variety of licenses and taking on projects for various publishers. But in between projects, they tinkered with a few ideas here and there. One of them was the concept of an asymmetrical multiplayer game similar to the Jelly Wars mode we had seen in “Naughty Bear”, and it was made by the same team behind “Naughty Bear”! Four players must work together to repair generators in order to escape. Escape from what, though? Well, escape from a fifth player who was roaming the map and hunting all of them down. This was “Dead by Daylight”, and it was unlike any other game the industry had seen before in 2016. Though rudimentary in its animations and level design, it was a horror game that allowed friends to work together or scare the crap out of each other. It was enough to catch the attention of big YouTubers and streamers such as Markiplier, enough to attract tens of thousands of players early on. Chandler Riggs himself was enamored with the game very early on in its infancy. Said Riggs, “It was me and two other friends. There was always a random, and we would dog on the random. That was our collective person to shout at aside from the Killer… Some of the best times were awesome, crazy escapes, pulling yourself off hook and jumping in the hatch. It was awesome times!” Was it enough to call it a success? Maybe. “Dead by Daylight” was made on a pretty measly budget compared to most games at the time, and the plan was to throw the game out onto the market, make whatever money it could for Behaviour, and then, move on with our lives.

Except we didn’t, not when new Killers and Survivors were getting added soon after. While the Nurse would serve as an interesting kick-off for this post-launch life, DBD garnered more attention with its second expansion, “The Halloween Chapter”. Even more folks began checking out the game now that they were told they could play as Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. With his unique tier-based mechanics, Michael players could stalk Survivors from a distance in order to make Survivors become Exposed, forcing them to be instantly downed. It perfectly incorporated the horror of the original “Halloween” with video game design. Even the classic music stings accompanied Michael whenever he ascended or descended a tier.

For the next year or two, the player count was somewhat stagnant. “Dead by Daylight” would soon invite Freddy Krueger from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, Amanda Young from the “SAW” movies, and introduce a new character to become Ghost Face from “Scream”. The game even got “Silent Hill’s” Pyramid Head and Heather Mason in 2020. 

However, it wasn’t until early 2021 when Behaviour Interactive really saw DBD take off with all guns blazing. In April 2021, “Dead by Daylight” got massive exposure to an entirely new audience when Capcom and Behaviour Interactive announced that “Resident Evil” was making its way into the Fog. The series that made survival horror gaming was finally joining the legends of horror. After that announcement, the player count grew in a way DBD nor Behaviour had ever seen before. (Personal note: yours truly had already been playing the game for a few months now, and the announcement was everything I could have wanted.) The playerbase grew even further when DBD got a second “Resident Evil” expansion the following year. Not only could you play as Nemesis, Jill, or Leon, but now Rebecca, Ada, and Wesker as well!

Since then, Behaviour Interactive was managing to acquire more and more licenses to cram into the Fog. From Chucky and Pinhead to the Xenomorph and Vecna, every new Chapter felt like a scramble to make the ultimate video game that celebrates horror across every form of entertainment. How exactly is Behaviour managing to justify all of these crazy crossovers? Well, through a simple narrative trick that Cote gave a clear explanation for… “There’s a good story about when we were talking with the people responsible for ‘Silent Hill’, they were telling us in the lore that Pyramid Head and Cheryl had never been together. Those two are not part of the same thing. I said, ‘No, I don’t think you understand. Imagine you play all the ‘Silent Hill’ games, then you watched the movies, then you read the books, then you go to sleep. Then, you have a nightmare where everything is jumbled together… The Entity creates the reality of ‘Dead by Daylight’ out of thoughts and fears and memories of people, but it’s not the real thing. It is a representation of the thing.’ And that is what got them on board.” It’s almost hard to imagine that there was one IP that DBD was still missing over the next couple of years, and it was the most requested IP Behaviour had received throughout the game’s history.

August 2024 marked the tenth anniversary of “Five Nights at Freddy’s”, the indie horror game that became a phenomenon with its terrifying “Chuck E. Cheese gone wrong” premise. To mark the occasion, series creator Scott Cawthon took to social media to tell fans to expect an announcement from… “someone”. It wasn’t long until Behaviour announced that “Five Nights at Freddy’s” was coming to “Dead by Daylight”. Sure enough, when Springtrap and Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria released in June 2025, hundreds of thousands of players were rushing in to learn the game just to play as the Animatronic…or Glitchtrap…or Matthew Lillard. 

Although, sometimes, it’s not enough to just contact a licensor and say, “Hey, we want to do this thing with your IP”. Sometimes, you need a bit more of a push from fans such as RickGrimesforDBD. Rick had begun as a massive fan of “The Walking Dead” before entering the Fog in DBD. “I started with the show with Season Three. I caught up just in time, and from there, it just became a world I fell in love with.” Having been a massive fan of the show and the comics, Rick began a move to get “The Walking Dead” into “Dead by Daylight”, starting with getting Chandler Riggs, who played Carl in the show, to post…a Cameo? Riggs was not only surprised, but excited to be able to geek out about DBD. Needless to say, the post caught fire quick, which put Behaviour a little bit on edge. As Cote explained, “Interacting with these things is always very delicate because if it’s something in the works, it gets touchy to respond. But if it's not and then we respond, then it’s like…what’s happening? Is it more telling? So, we should act as if it's not telling? It’s a weird dance we have with prolific content creators, people who are super engaged. We want to because that enthusiasm, that passion is fuel, baby! But…yeah.” 

The addition of Rick, Michonne, and Daryl speaks volumes about how colossal DBD has become in horror gaming. It’s almost impossible to ignore.

Looking back, not surprising that Behaviour Interactive managed to turn DBD into a successful live service game. As Cote had mentioned to us, the studio already had tons of experience developing games based on various IPs from movies and TV shows. So, what exactly was the difference between doing that and adapting IPs in an original work? Admittedly, you can say “wrestling with spaghetti code”, but you get what we’re saying. But it’s interesting seeing how we went from dormant horror icons to modern giants like “Resident Evil” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s”. It’s even more fascinating how DBD went from a simple experimental title to a game that pays Behaviour’s bills and then some.

So, the only question now is “who’s next?” Who else is the Entity going to wrangle into the Fog? At the time of this video, we recently saw Rick, Michonne, and Daryl from “The Walking Dead” get added. But who else is left? The Predator? Art the Clown? JAWS? Or maybe a certain hockey mask-wearing water zombie finally joins the fray? Next year's tenth anniversary will be one to watch!We managed to ask Cote about Behaviour's plans for DbD’s tenth anniversary: are there any plans for a fan event? “We’re gonna do something. We’re gonna do something big here in Montreal, and I’m gonna leave it at that for now.” Time to get the passport ready.

“Yeah?...Go play the ‘Walking Dead’ chapter…in ‘Dead by Daylight’. I’ve done this before. Go like and subscribe and all that!”