Dead by Daylight devs are about to unite the game’s audiences scattered across several platforms by adding crossplay and cross-progression support in an upcoming update. For a 6-year-old title with a massive community, this is a logical step in providing additional comfort of experiencing the game.
Dead by Daylight initially released on PC via Steam back in 2016 as an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game, which was warmly welcomed by the gaming community. The title then successfully expanded over on all of the relevant platforms in the course of several years with a Stadia port expected to launch this September. Apart from obvious existing console versions, there’re even mobile ports of Dead by Daylight, which means that the title effectively covers all of the potential gaming audiences. Sadly, these audiences are all stuck in their separate ecosystems limited by their platforms of choice, but this situation is expected to change soon.
The detailed plan regarding crossplay support in Dead by Daylight was shared by the development team in an official blog post. It is worth mentioning that the title released on Windows Store almost a year ago, and it was shortly followed by a crossplay feature between Windows Store and Steam. This time, however, developers are about to make a significant step further by enabling crossplay and cross-friends support on consoles. Once the update goes live, players will be able to join combined matchmaking pools and invite their friends from across PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. Cross-progression, however, is a bit trickier since it requires to transfer both character progression and account purchases across different platforms. Developers cannot guarantee that the feature will ever work on all consoles, which leaves cross-progression for Steam, Google Stadia, and Nintendo Switch for the time being.
As clarified in the blog post, the development team researched gaming data and ran testing sessions to make sure that the upcoming cross-play update wouldn’t negatively affect loading times or any other aspects of playing Dead by Daylight. Additionally, players will be granted an option to disable crossplay if they choose to when the update goes live, although there’s no exact launch date. That being said, cross-play between major platforms and mobiles is not being currently considered as that would require an enormous amount of work since mobile versions of Dead by Daylight have a different architecture.
Given that crossplay has become a highly requested feature for multiplatform video games, it was a matter of time until Dead by Daylight would adopt it. Judging by examples of several huge titles, including Rocket League and Fortnite, cross-play is the healthiest way for multiplayer online games to evolve and maintain their communities. There’re little to no downsides in enabling cross-play, which basically means that Dead by Daylight along with its loyal fans will hugely benefit from the upcoming update.
Source: Dead by Daylight