Dead by Daylight’s got no shortage of potential crossovers for licensed content, and considering how often franchises get continuations or reboots, that well of possibilities grows deeper still. The game already has content from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw franchises, for example, and each of those properties will have new movies coming out in 2021 with the release of the rebooted Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Spiral: From the Book of Saw. After speaking with Dead by Daylight’s game director Mathieu Cรดtรฉ, it sounds like there’s a possibility the game could get some content from those future projects.
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We’ve seen already how Behaviour Interactive can expand on licensed content, a type of DLC that’s not so easily molded into new things as Dead by Daylight’s original Chapters. Recent examples of this include Leatherface’s new cosmetic added years after the iconic Killer joined the game as well as the freedom Behaviour Interactive was granted to create unique versions of the Silent Hill characters added not long ago.
Speaking to Cรดtรฉ around the time The Twins were released, we asked if the Dead by Daylight team had the new Saw and Texas Chainsaw movies on its radars. Cรดtรฉ said “very much so,” but added that it’s not a guarantee the game will get something connected to those movies.
“Very much so, and usually if they are not, because I can’t possibly be expected to know about everything, our licensors are usually very forward about it and they reach out to us,” Cรดtรฉ said. “We talk regularly and they say, ‘Oh, by the way, we have this new thing coming out.’ But also, it’s important to put a little disclaimer there, because it’s not because there’s a new Saw movie coming out that it automatically is part of the same license field or whatever.”
Cรดtรฉ listed Michael Myers as an example, a character who’s been reimagined in different ways throughout the history of the Halloween franchise. He said sometimes Behaviour Interactive doesn’t have access to all those things, but oftentimes, they do.
Another consideration is timelines, and not just Behaviour Interactive’s. Cรดtรฉ said the developers typically have their roadmap finalized months in advance, but as we’ve seen from this year more than ever before, release dates for movies can easily change. He said it’s tough to adapt to changes, but the team wants to make sure it keeps things relevant.
“Being able to release, let’s say, a new outfit for The Pig based off of the Spiral movie coming is an interesting thing,” Cรดtรฉ said. “It’s very difficult for us to … Our timeline, our roadmap, is usually settled, at least figured out, six months to nine months in advance. We know what we’re going to do and what we’re releasing. It’s tough if these things happen fast to readjust, but there are things we can do, and we try to make it relevant.”
After entertaining the idea of new content from Saw or Texas Chainsaw movies, Cรดtรฉ brought up, unprompted, the fact that there’s a new season of Stranger Things coming out. He said he was excited for the new season, and when asked if Dead by Daylight was excited for the new season, he said “I can speak personally when I say I’m very excited.”
