Dead by Daylight 10th Anniversary and Jason Voorhees

Dead by Daylight turned 10 years old this week, and Behaviour Interactive marked the occasion with a sold-out fan event in Montreal and a livestream that finally delivered one of the most requested additions in the game's history: Jason Voorhees. The Friday the 13th icon joined the killer roster as Chapter 40 on June 16, the same date the studio has tied to the franchise's official 10th anniversary, after years of complicated licensing that kept him out of The Fog.

What started in 2016 as a small Montreal project with internal sales forecasts of around 300,000 copies has grown into a game that has now reached more than 70 million players, with 2025 standing as its most successful year to date. This piece looks at how Dead by Daylight got from that modest launch to its current scale, how player opinion of the game has shifted along the way, what Jason brings to a match, and what Behaviour has lined up for the years ahead, including the one anniversary code that is genuinely worth redeeming.

A Decade of Dead by Daylight From Small Studio Project to Genre Leader

Dead by Daylight launched in June 2016, built by a team of around 30 people at Behaviour Interactive, a Montreal studio that had been making licensed and work for hire games since 1992. Co-founder Remi Racine has said internal forecasts at the time predicted sales of roughly 300,000 copies, a modest target for what the team saw as a niche idea: an asymmetric multiplayer game where one killer hunts four survivors across a single shared map.

That niche idea turned into the most played horror game in its category, with Behaviour reporting more than 70 million players over the decade and a current daily average above one million across PC and console. The team behind the game has grown from those original 30 developers to close to 500 working on Dead by Daylight specifically, inside a studio that now employs more than 1,200 people. 2025 brought in over six million new players, and Behaviour says revenue climbed more than 50 percent over the past twelve months, numbers that point to a live service game still gaining ground a decade after launch rather than coasting on nostalgia.

How Player Sentiment Has Shifted Since Launch

Early Dead by Daylight built its reputation on being a scrappy, almost broken love letter to slasher movies, and a lot of its first wave of goodwill came from content creators who treated the game as a skill based puzzle to be solved rather than a polished product. Years of licensed chapters, perk additions, and balance passes followed, and with them came a steady stream of community frustration that has never fully gone away. Long running complaints center on a perk list that has grown large enough to be hard to learn, matchmaking and MMR systems that veteran players describe as inconsistent, and a sense that cosmetics and new licensed killers get more attention from Behaviour than core balance fixes.

That tension is visible in how the community talks about the game today. Forum threads accuse Behaviour of prioritizing skins over the systems that decide who wins a match, while official numbers tell a different story of record player counts and rising revenue at the same time. The 2v8 mode, a stripped down take on the original formula, became popular specifically because it reminded longtime players of an earlier, simpler version of the game, and Behaviour has acknowledged the feedback by promising a matchmaking rework described as a re-imagination of how matches are built rather than a small tuning pass. In short, the relationship between Dead by Daylight and its community has gone from early curiosity to a much more demanding, vocal partnership, even as the player base keeps growing.

Jason Voorhees Joins Dead by Daylight as Chapter 40

Jason Voorhees enters The Fog through a partnership between Behaviour Interactive and Jason Universe, the company managing the modern rights to the Friday the 13th character. Senior Creative Director Dave Richard said the studio always knew the 10th anniversary chapter needed to be something significant, and that the timing finally lined up to bring Jason in as the headline addition. The character became the most pre-ordered killer skin in the game's history before he was even playable, reflecting just how long fans have been asking for him.

Jason became playable on PC through the Steam public test build on May 26, 2026, ahead of his full release across PC and console on June 16. With Jason added, Dead by Daylight now lists 41 killers in total, completing what several outlets have called the Mount Rushmore of slasher icons alongside Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Ghostface, Leatherface, Pyramid Head, Pinhead, and Chucky.

Jason Voorhees Killer Power: Omnipresent Evil and Improvised Carnage

Jason's kit is split into two linked abilities rather than a single power. Omnipresent Evil lets him vanish from the map entirely while moving faster than normal, tracking survivors through cues such as footsteps instead of the usual terror radius and red stain that most killers give off. While invisible he reads the map and lines up a return point at a pallet, vault location, or breakable wall, then bursts back into the world hard enough to destroy nearby obstacles and force a scream out of any survivor caught close to the impact.

Improvised Carnage covers what happens once he reappears. Containers scattered around the map hold makeshift weapons such as locker fragments, broken generator parts, splintered pallets, and even hooks, which Jason can pick up individually and throw at survivors. A solid hit staggers the target, and hitting an injured survivor near a wall can pin them in place, though every thrown item has to be gathered again the next time Jason uses Omnipresent Evil rather than refilling automatically. The loop rewards patient, map aware play: vanish, gather intel and weapons, reappear with force, and fall back into stealth once the area is clear.

Jason Voorhees Outfits and the Jason Collection

Jason launches with four outfits in total. The default look recreates the classic 13-hole hockey mask, machete, and weathered clothing that most fans associate with the character, and it comes free with the chapter. Three additional outfits are sold separately as the Jason Collection: Backwoods Terror swaps the machete for a heavy axe and trades his jacket for flannel and suspenders, Death Forsaken gives him a more decayed, supernatural look with exposed bone and a shovel, and Depths of Despair covers him in barnacles, coral, and seaweed as a nod to his time at the bottom of Crystal Lake.

Dead by Daylight Year 11 Roadmap and Future Updates

Behaviour used the anniversary broadcast to rule out a Dead by Daylight sequel and confirm the studio is instead investing further in the existing game. Executive Producer Jose Ramos described the team as having barely scratched the surface of what the game can become, and the roadmap that followed backs that up with a long list of crossovers, systems work, and a confirmed film adaptation directed by Thordur Palsson, working from a screenplay by Alexandre Aja and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick with Blumhouse producing.

On the gameplay side, the headline item is a visual overhaul planned for 2027 covering character models, facial animation, map lighting, and the game's first dynamic weather systems. Sandboxed modding tools are also planned for 2027, intended to let players build and share their own maps and modes, alongside two new official modes referred to as 1v1 Mode and Zombie Mode. The table below summarizes the main Year 11 additions and their expected timing as shared during the broadcast.

Dead by Daylight 10th Anniversary Bloodpoints Code

Behaviour also handed out an official birthday gift through its official Dead by Daylight account on X: the code DBD10BIRTHDAY grants 10 million Bloodpoints, the in-game currency used to level characters through the Bloodweb, and it can be redeemed until July 16, 2026 through the in-game redemption screen or the Dead by Daylight website. This is described by Behaviour as the largest single Bloodpoints giveaway in the game's history, and it lines up well with the new Jason content for anyone looking to unlock his perks and add-ons quickly.

Dead by Daylight 10th Anniversary Final Thoughts

Ten years on, Dead by Daylight sits in an unusual spot for a live service game: it is both one of the most criticized titles in its own community and one of the best performing horror games on the market at the same time. Jason Voorhees closes out a licensing chase that started almost as early as the game itself, and his arrival lands at a moment when Behaviour is making bigger promises about matchmaking, visuals, and player created content than at almost any other point in the game's history.

Whether Year 11 changes the conversation around the game will depend less on Jason, who was always going to sell regardless of the state of balance, and more on whether the promised matchmaking rework and 2027 overhaul actually address the complaints that have followed Dead by Daylight since its early years. For now, the 10th anniversary numbers speak for themselves, even if the loudest parts of the community remain unconvinced that bigger player counts mean a healthier game.