In June this year, Behaviour Interactive’s Dead By Daylight will celebrate ten years of release: quite the feat for an asymmetrical multiplayer game that was designed with no thoughts of live service or roadmaps. The core of the game remains the same as it was at launch, more or less, but everything around that experience has been carefully built out by Behaviour over the years, and at the time of writing around 50,000 players are enjoying some grisly horror on Steam (and it’s also available on multiple consoles).
PC Gamer’s Chris Livingston had the chance to sit down at GDC with Behaviour’s Dave Richard, senior creative director, and Mathieu Cote, head of partnerships, and when he opened by remarking on those ten years, Cote immediately shot back, “It’s crazy.”
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Cote adds that DBD’s in-game store didn’t arrive until the game’s third year, and the battle pass in year four. Point being that DBD had that chance to grow and change and adapt over a long period, a luxury that many games don’t have.
“One of the stats I was reading lately is that probably something like 40 to 50% of the hours spent gaming are spent on games that are four plus years old,” says Cote. “If people play the games that they like that they’ve been sharing with their friends for years, that’s what they do. We’re lucky that we’re one of those, right?”
“We managed to get into that niche and we were the first one there successful enough,” says Richard. “Now we’ve built kind of a legacy. So yeah, absolutely there to stay forever.”
Have you planned another 10 years?
The question has barely been asked before Cote and Richard respond in unison: “At least!” The pair collapse in laughter, joking that you’d never be able to tell they work together. As for what those ten years might hold, however, they want to save the surprises for an anniversary presentation.
“There’s a big party in Montreal, we’re doing a big celebration,” says Cote. “It’s our first actual physical gathering for the 10th Anniversary. We’ll be able to drop a lot of surprises but for now, we don’t have any.”
“Oh, there’s this one killer that does the thing,” jokes Richard. “It’s really cool, that’s a great headline. The guy with the thing is coming to DBD, breaking news!”
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