Behaviour Interactive creative director Dave Richard and head of partnerships Mathieu Cote spoke at the Game Developers Conference recently, and Richard made his pitch clear: he wants a Dead by Daylight soulslike.
"I want a DBD Souls game," Richard said. "That's all I want. I want like Elden Ring in the world of DBD. That would be cool."
The idea that keeps coming back
Richard wasn't just riffing. He returned to the soulslike concept later when asked where he sees Dead by Daylight in ten years, positioning it as one of several "other experiences" that could expand the DBD universe beyond the core asymmetrical multiplayer game and pull in new audiences.
He also laid out a player count target that clarifies the scale of ambition here. Dead by Daylight has 70 million players right now. Richard's goal? "A billion eventually. Bare minimum."
That's an aggressive number for a horror game that launched in 2016, but the official Dead by Daylight news page tracks a studio that hasn't stopped expanding since launch.
A universe that already stretches far
The soulslike pitch lands differently when you consider how far Behaviour has already stretched the DBD brand. The studio has shipped a dating sim spinoff (Hooked on You), a choice-driven narrative game, comics, a board game, and a film adaptation with Blumhouse and Atomic Monster that Cote confirmed is still in development.
Cote's response to the spinoff pipeline came across as genuine rather than rehearsed: "Even just as a huge nerd to see talented people who are very good at the medium you don't know, show you what you've inspired them to do, and that's pretty cool."
Why a soulslike actually fits
The pitch isn't as random as it sounds. The Souls series and Dead by Daylight share more design overlap than you'd expect: oppressive atmosphere, death as core mechanic, and lore delivered through environmental storytelling instead of exposition dumps. Translating the Entity, the Fog, and DBD's killer roster into a third-person action RPG framework is a real creative opportunity, not just wishful thinking.
DBD already has enough lore infrastructure to support a single-player narrative experience. The Entity's realm, the survivors' backstories, the killer origins — the asymmetrical multiplayer format barely touches that material.
Whether Behaviour develops it internally or partners with an external studio like they have for other spinoffs is still unclear. Richard framed it as a personal wish rather than an active project, so don't expect an announcement soon. For what Behaviour is actually shipping right now, check out:
