Hey everyone! Quick correction on something I got wrong in this video. When licensed DLC gets removed, you don't actually lose the maps. Behaviour bundles the DLC with free map updates, so buying the DLC doesn't mean you're buying the map. The maps are free content that get removed, while your DLC purchases stay on your account, and simply get delisted from the store.

This does change the framing that I used in the video, but it doesn't change the take that the DBD community had on licensed characters.

After the removal of the Stranger Things chapter, people were still genuinely upset and questioned the future of the game.The bigger frustration was never really about maps anyway, it was about the characters and perks. If you didn't own a licensed chapter before it left, you were locked out of that killer or survivor for good, and new players couldn't buy them at all.

Each character's signature perks can be used across your other characters once you level them up, so a delisted chapter meant losing access to entire perk builds until you were able to unlock them through the blood web.

There was a highly upvoted thread at the time where players laid this out perfectly, pointing out how bizarre it is for a PvP game to let entire characters and their strategies just stop being obtainable, and imagining how much of a disaster it would be if a fighting game or a shooter pulled playable content mid-life the same way.

So while I got the specifics wrong on how the map removal works, the bigger point stands: building your game on borrowed characters means the rights holders, not you or the studio, ultimately decide what stays and what goes.

Thanks to everyone who pointed this out, and sorry for the mix-up!

Dead by Daylight is the game that keeps living despite making mistake after mistake because its competition fails harder.
Saying this as a hardcore DbD fan.

Short answer: the competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot

Just wait until daylight

I want to point out that chapters LEAVING Dead By Daylight does not REMOVE the characters from the game. You simply cannot purchase them anymore. If you joined Dead By Daylight after Demogorgon was gone and before he was reintroduced, you could go against someone that had purchased him before his removal, just like you could play with another player that had Nancy or Steve. Maps are disabled though, but maps are not part of the paid chapter, they're part of the update for free for everyone, tied to the chapter.

You forgot to mention that the base for dbd was the naughty bear multiplayer mode

Im convinced they made a deal with Satan or some Eldritch being for this game.

DBD is kinda like Valve. No matter how many mistakes they make with their products, the competition just does it 10x worse with basically 0 remorse. Honestly I wish Evolve actually lived longer. The concept of an alien monster surviving against 4 hunters, using its alien biology to transform, or evolve, into bigger and stronger versions was so cool.

I'm so glad other people caught that detail about DLC not being removed from players who paid.

I think what also keeps the game thriving is the community itself. Players have found that every match, while may sound the same on paper, are anything but. You never know what will happen. From funny bugs, to making crazy teamwork, to having fun with everyone including the killer and just being silly. It's become it's own ecosystem and society that people have found to adore. You end up meeting new friends or even just cheering someone up who's been having a bad run. Survivors will sacrifice themselves to give the killer at least one kill to make them feel better, and killers will off toxic survivors who are not helping their own teammates. And I think that's what really makes DBD so special.

The funny part about all of this is that the only living competitor, Identity V, has been surviving nearly as long as DBD has, and they HELPED create it.

Only reason why not more people know about it is because Netease for some reason hates advertising it in the west (and putting it on Steam)

16:43 you don’t pay for the maps with licenses dlc. And people who already owned it got to keep it. You could still play as Steve and Nancy and the demo. You just couldn’t buy it anymore and there pers because available for everyone for free in the blood web

The jungle gym at 6:58 having 2 pallets was scarier than myers

0:20 It's supposed to be dead by now, but somehow it's still seeing the daylight.

People complain about this game so much because they secretly love it and want it to do better. It’s a great game imo, even for all its issues

No game that is directly tied to a single IP will ever replace dbd. There's just not enough room for variety and expansion.

I used to watch the Dead by Daylight Let's Play by the German YouTuber Gronkh, and I thought I’d stop playing the game after 100 hours. In 2025, I wanted to play a game featuring the Xenomorph, which is how I ended up playing Dead by Daylight. Now I’ve already clocked in 950 hours, even though I only started playing in mid-2025. It is my favorite online game and my favorite horror game. And im the highest rank as a Killer and a Survivor, Iridescent 1 😊

What other official game has created such a unique hall of fame of horror where one can play as so many different iconic horror characters? None. That's the appeal of DBD for me personally

When they one day shut the game down, they'll say
"..and so, daylight has come."

Human summary: Dead By Daylight is alive because there is nothing like it on market