Dead by Daylight: could a popular horror become an esports discipline?

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Hardly anyone (especially on Twitch) thought that Dead by Daylight, released in 2016, would become the main co-op horror game, not to mention that it would be staying in this role for a long time. Critics were initially not very supportive of the game, but ordinary gamers fell in love with it. Despite the game becoming 5 years old in 2021, it is still under active development and has an esports community (albeit small). We will tell you what is the secret of DbD's success, and how (and most importantly why) is the esports scene developing around this game.

Why is Dead by Daylight so popular?

DbD is an asymmetric survival horror, which means that the opposing sides are in unequal conditions and, obviously, are pursuing opposite tasks. One of the sides of the conflict is represented by a maniac who is controlled from a first-person view. His goal is to obliterate four survivors who are trying to escape.

The main feature of the game is the feeling of constant tension. Survivors cannot relax even for a second, simply because the enemy can appear out of nowhere at any moment. In addition, the game’s stages are non-linear, so it is impossible to just remember a single sequence of actions and win through that: everything is procedurally generated in a random way.

Playing as a maniac is far from being as primitive and boring as it might seem at first glance. The killer cannot die and is able to deal with any adversary one-on-one. But a mindless pursuit of one’s opponents is not viable: if they have at least a little of teamplay going on, they shall be able to score an easy victory (even if not all of them shall reach it alive). Therefore, the maniac needs to read the in-game situation well enough and anticipate the actions of the opponents. All of this benefits DbD's replayability.

Horror is the perfect choice to spend the evening in a pleasant company while having a lot of fun on Discord. Also, the developers regularly improve the game – both from a technical point of view and in terms of content: the game features characters from other popular horror franchises, including Michael Myers (“Halloween”), Freddy Krueger (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”), Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and even Silent Hill's Pyramid Head.

The developers did not develop the esports aspect of DbD on purpose...

The developers (who are now also the full-fledged publishers) of the game from Behavior Interactive are quite methodical in developing their creation. In addition to constant updates, they also teamed up with NetEase Games to release a mobile version of the game and also tried to push DbD into esports!

Two years after the release of the game, in 2018, Behavior Interactive teamed up with tournament operator Space Esports and hosted the official Dead by Daylight championship, with a total prize pool of $10K.

However, the developers themselves quickly abandoned the idea of making DbD into a full-fledged esports discipline. As admitted by the game designer Mathieu Cote, the developers were initially facing the choice: to develop either the competitive component of the game, or the narrative one. And the choice fell on the latter option.

And while Behavior Interactive really saw the esports potential of DbD, the developers realized that this game wasn’t about competition in the first place, but about fun. Additionally, just how would one define the potentially best player or team in DbD? This is quite difficult, which means that it is better to avoid dealing with this matter by themselves – and so this was the decision of Behavior Interactive.

...but DbD still has an esports community!

Although BI themselves are not developing the esports component of their game, they are actively helping enthusiasts who are interested in it. First of all, this concerns the game functionality: some time after the release, the observer mode appeared in the game (so that it was possible to broadcast games) as well as a modifiable custom mode where one can select maps, as well as enable or disable the ability to use various perks.

The third-party tournament organizers also did not show much interest in the game. For a while, the opportunity to hold Dead by Daylight tournaments was even provided by the ESL platform, but after some time that section was closed.

Interestingly, Dead by Daylight is a popular esports discipline within Twitch Rivals. But there is one nuance: this is something that only happens on the eve of Halloween.

Twitch Rivals DbD tournaments are watched by tens of thousands of average viewers, and viewer’s peak was reached during the 2019 tournament, with more than 53K viewers watching it at the same time.

DbD esports is going strong in Japan and Thailand

In early 2021, big news regarding DbD esports came from Japan: Behavior Interactive announced a tournament in Japan (and only on PlayStation consoles). Moreover, the championship had a decently sized prize pool of ¥3M (~$27.5K).

The championship ended at the end of February and was broadcasted on the official YouTube channel of the game. To date, the recordings of broadcasts have scored from 213K to 269K views. There were 29K peak viewers and 17.1K average viewers.

Aside from Japan, Dead by Daylight esports is quite strong in Thailand. The first local tournament took place back in 2017: Dead by Daylight Thailand Invitational. The competition was broadcast only in Thai and showed good viewer statistics, gathering a total of 7.1K peak viewers.

Over the course of 2019-2020 Thai tournament operator DossierChannel has hosted three Dead by Daylight events with the support of Twitch, all of which have achieved at least moderate degree of success in terms of viewership.

Tournaments were watched by 2.1K to 4.2K average viewers, while in 2020 the championship also reached the mark of 17.6K peak viewers. That’s quite a good indicator for such a niche discipline.

The same tournament operator also hosted the LEO Dead by Daylight Invitational in August 2020. The championship attracted 3.6K average viewers and 13.5K peak viewers. As it can be seen, in Thailand, DbD fans actively follow the esports aspect of their favorite game!

Although the esports community of Dead by Daylight is not that large and has its own peculiarities – it still does exist! And although Behavior Interactive continues to actively refine the game and fill it with new content, the developers still have no global esports-related plans.

It may not make much sense to develop DbD esports straight away – as now the game as a discipline enjoys somewhat limited popularity, and even that only in some Asian countries. As for the English-speaking regions, these are merely satisfied with their favorite streamers entering the game on a regular basis: this is why the game regularly stays in the Twitch chart’s top 20 and is content with just that.