Update: We are continuing to work on making Nintendo Switch Cross-Progression available - we'll have news to share soon.
As mentioned during the anniversary livestream, Dead by Daylight is planning to add the Cross-Play feature. As it is a topic widely discussed in the community, we are here to provide you with more clarity on our vision regarding Cross-Play / Cross-Friends and Cross Progression.
Dead by Daylight is now available on multiple platforms and soon Stadia will join that line up. While a few years ago it was impossible to imagine that Cross-Play could be a thing in video games, it now seems a logical choice for us. Our aim has always been to make sure players can play together as a fully connected community, and today we are excited to share more about that plan.
Cross-Play and Cross-Friends
Ten months ago, we introduced Cross-Play on PC with the release of the game on the Windows Store. Cross-play was already on our minds even before this release and thus linking these two platforms together came naturally. Cross-Play went live a few days after the release of the Windows Store, greatly improving the player's experience.
But that was only the beginning, as the following two topics were listed as the most requested by the community:
- Play with my friends from other platforms (Cross-Friends)
- Cross-Progression
In theory, Cross-friends, a feature to add players from a platform to another was a matter of production efforts. Cross-Friends is now live on Windows Store & Steam as a beta test and, so far, we are receiving amazing feedback.
However, we wanted to make sure that the Cross-Play aspect of that feature would not impact the general player's experience. We knew players would ask about Balancing, Matchmaking time, Network communications, etc. We investigated our data, ran playtests, and gathered feedback and we are now confident moving forward with the release of Cross-Play on console.
Cross-Friends Mockup
Now that all lights are green, we are preparing the activation of Cross-Play and Cross-Friends on consoles. In this scenario, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players will be able to play together, and with people on PC. We are polishing the last details to make sure that it will only impact our game positively. As we are still monitoring the situation and numbers on PC, we cannot give you a specific date for now, but we can definitely say it is coming really soon! (like before the first snow, in Montreal (hopefully))
Once Cross-Play is live on all platforms, we will carefully monitor the data to ensure the stability of the game. If it becomes unstable, we will disable cross-play to allow us to work on a fix. Player experience first!!
Players will have the choice to opt-out of Cross-Play if they prefer.
We have seen a lot of questions about potential Cross-Play with Dead by Daylight Mobile, for now, this is not part of our plan. The game system and architecture are significantly different. We are prioritizing the release of cross-play between PC & Consoles first to make sure that the experience is smooth for the players on those platforms.
Cross Progression
Allowing players to team up with their friends from other platforms was the first step to break barriers between platforms. We know that some of our players are active on several platforms, and Cross-Progression is also one of the top wishes from our community.
We are thrilled to announce that we are preparing the first steps toward Cross-Progression and that it will be available for Steam, Google Stadia and Nintendo Switch in September! Players will be able to share their progression, purchases, and inventory on those 3 platforms – Exceptions might have to be made to accommodate for some external licensing needs.
As of today, we cannot make Cross-Progression available on other platforms and we have no guarantee that it will happen. However, we know that this is a community wish, and we will keep trying to make it happen.
How will Cross-Progression work
Merging several years of game progression of millions of players is a technical challenge that few games are trying to tackle.
We spent lots of time preparing and discussing the best way to provide Cross-Progression to our players. We want to make sure the transition will be smooth and that we protect our player's progression.
In order to achieve a good transition, we had to build a brand new ecosystem. Players will have to create a Behaviour Account to link their progression, so our server can merge it.
All our efforts will be focused on monitoring account merging to ensure that players will not have any issue during that complex process.
Thanks for reading! we are super excited to read your comments. Many people on the team are working hard to transform that vision into something that you will experience as soon as possible with your keyboard / controller. We hope this article gave your more clarification about the future of Dead by Daylight!
See you in The Fog.
The Dead by Daylight team.
