It doesn't matter if they're AAA or indie; third-person or first-person; dystopian, militaristic, or horror, live-service games keep meeting Highguard's fate – arriving in a gorgeous bubble of hype only to get popped and delisted. But not Dead by Daylight, whose developer Behaviour Interactive is now celebrating 10 years of the asymmetrical multiplayer's success at Game Developer Conference 2026, where creative director Dave Richard and head of partnership Mathieu Cote tells GamesRadar+ the secret.
The secret is… "Everything's tough. It's a hellish landscape of challenges," says Richard. Actually, that's not a secret, it's reality. Cote adds that, "A lot of people ask, 'What's the recipe? How do you create a live game?'" But "our recipe was, 'Don't do that.' Literally. We didn't create a live game. We created a game that sort of lived, and then we supported it, and we grew it."
"If you look back at what we released 10 years ago, it was a rough affair," Cote reflects. "It was a shell of what it is today. But the core experience was there. The vision. The dream of what this game could be." Dead by Daylight is now the unchallenged empress of online horror games, constantly introducing both new, original content and big-deal collaborations with everyone from Freddy Fazbear to Nicolas Cage like they're simply roses filling out an antique vase.
It's hard for anyone to keep up. Other games that borrow Dead by Daylight's general format – a Killer character tries to prevent a team of bruised Survivors from escaping – have suffered brief existences while Dead by Daylight only grows. In fact, it had its all-time peak concurrent player count of 120,717 people a few months ago.
"In 2026, all new games and games that are established are competing for [players'] sweet time," Richard says. But, Cote explains, "We've created a familiar place. It's not just about playing the game. For a lot of people, it's their community." So there's no trick. It just takes time.
Keep an eye out for upcoming horror games anyway.
