Is Dead by Daylight cross-platform?

Over almost a decade, with continuous updates and new content, Dead by Daylight has grown to adopt millions of players. It’s the best asymmetrical horror game on the market, offering something truly unique that few can compete with, thanks to its sheer breadth of diverse characters, potential builds, maps, and events. However, its cross-platform progression leaves a lot to be desired.

Does Dead by Daylight have cross-platform progression?

No, Dead by Daylight does not have cross-platform progression for most platforms. The only exception to this is between Steam and the Epic Games Store, which does feature cross-progression. This is pretty pointless, though, because both are used to play on a single platform: PC.

This means your progress, the characters you have unlocked, as well as their Perks, and all data pertaining to your career in-game are restricted to the platform you play on. For example, I play on PS4/PS5, meaning I can move between those two systems because they’re counted as the same version. However, if I were to play on PC, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch, none of my unlocks or the DLC I own would be accessible because I’d have to create a brand new account.

It’s hard to say when cross-platform progression will come to Dead by Daylight. But the game has been around for so long now, and at least features crossplay, that it doesn’t seem to matter. Players are happy with where they’re playing and what they own on that platform. Adding cross-platform progression would be a nice benefit, of course. Speaking purely for myself, it wouldn’t change where I play unless I wanted to take the game on holiday with me, at which point I’d use the Nintendo Switch for a week at a time.

Why doesn’t Dead by Daylight have cross-platform progression?

Dead by Daylight‘s developer, Behaviour Interactive, is constantly questioned when it comes to cross-platform progression. The issue could lie in bringing it to consoles is how DLC sales are handled. Since the game is so old, some purchases made six or so years ago on the PlayStation Store won’t be honored on the Microsoft Store or Nintendo eShop. This might make it tricky for the developer to award DLC-exclusive Killers and Survivors to players on each platform when they’ve only purchased it in a single ecosystem.

This is fine within a console ecosystem, such as between PS4 and PS5 or Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, because the purchases you’ve made are linked to the same account. There’s no discrepancy about who made the purchase or where. Licenses such as Stranger Things and other movie characters also come into play, which could make it incredibly difficult for cross-platform progression to be enabled for all platforms.

Behaviour Interactive has confirmed on its website at the time of writing that cross-progression only exists between Steam and Epic Games accounts. We wanted to add this source as a reference everyone can trust, even though developers regularly explain that cross-progression isn’t in the game during Dead by Daylight livestreams. Of course, if this changes, we’ll update this article immediately.