Last weekend, Behaviour Interactive delivered a strong showcase for Dead by Daylight teasing major visual overhauls and more. Alongside the arrival of Friday the 13th legend Jason Voorhees, the updates have pushed the asymmetrical online horror game’s popularity on Steam past previous levels.
A quick look at the all-time concurrent player count on SteamDB reveals a sharp uptick since April, which has just peaked at 125,820 players being active online 20 hours ago. With summer holidays about to properly begin and more updates in the coming weeks, it’ll be interesting to see whether this can climb even higher.
As a reminder, this only reflects the 10-year-old game’s performance on Steam. On PC, it’s also playable via the Epic Games Store and Microsoft apps. And of course, it’s available on PlayStation and Xbox consoles as well as Nintendo Switch. Oddly enough, no native Switch 2 version has been announced yet. All players also play together thanks to a cross-platform infrastructure that’s been around for years now.
In Dead by Daylight, players can either try to survive a supernatural killer looking to sacrifice them to please the cosmos-travelling Entity – described in the past as “evil in its purest form” – or become the hunter themselves. Its mix of co-op and player-versus-player horror gameplay has proven to be a winning formula over the years, especially as more killers and licensed horror icons have joined the murder party.
For now, Behaviour Interactive remains committed to expanding and refreshing Dead by Daylight rather than make a sequel. Looking at this rare case of player numbers going up instead of down over time, it seems like it’s the right call. A live-action Dead by Daylight movie is also in the works and should help bring in even more fresh meat.
