Developer Behaviour Interactive has said the name Dead by Daylight players have waited 10 long years and one 13-hour livestream to hear: Jason Voorhees.
The hockey mask-wearing slasher icon from Friday the 13th showed up after weeks of speculation from fans with a brief teaser today. He’s undeniably one of the most-requested Killers the long-running asymmetrical horror game has ever had, and while most are just happy to see the “Mount Rushmore of horror” finally completed, the road to Jason was anything but easy.
Dead by Daylight will celebrate its 10th anniversary this June, so to say expectations for its annual birthday festivities were through the roof would be an understatement. An unusual absence of leaks left fans to swim in a lake of rumors throughout the year, so despite Jason remaining atop the shortlist of potential Killers, fans have remained in the dark when it came to Behaviour’s plans.
A series of recent teasers polluted with references to the number 13 should have felt like a dead giveaway that the Friday the 13th rep was on the way, but the community of horror fans had other ideas. Fan predictions in the weeks leading up to today’s reveal began earnestly enough, as many hoped to see last year’s Five Nights at Freddy’s anniversary collaboration followed up with infamous monsters like Pennywise from Stephen King’s It or Art the Clown from the Terrifier series.
Theories about Hello Neighbor and BioShock followed soon after, but as names like Jaws, another half-joke character fans have talked about for years, entered the conversation, things truly began to spiral out of control. As a mix of sincere Killer predictions, memes, and pure chaos filled social channels, Behaviour launched its anniversary livestream yesterday, May 22, at 9 p.m. ET. Where fans hoped to find immediate answers to their questions, they were instead met with a still image of a cabin in the woods.
Tens of thousands of viewers then stayed locked into the stream of that image for 13 hours.
“It’s 4 a.m. and I’m being ragebaited,” one fan said.
“BHVR is about to turn me into the 10th anniversary killer,” another joked.
“In a few years?” someone else said in response to the above Reddit post. “It’s traumatizing us right now!”
Something like 90% of the Dead by Daylight cabin stream was…nothing. The other 10% helped break up the wait with eerie moments – such as bird calls, someone riding a bike, monsters crawling across the ground, camera glitches, and much, much more – but it didn’t take long for the anticipation to bubble into disappointment.
In the time players waited for the stream to show anything resembling a Dead by Daylight anniversary Killer reveal, many genuinely began to believe Slender Man would soon join the roster. Others spent their time making mock-ups for the infamous cabin to become the next playable character. Then, as the 13-hour mark passed, Jason was finally revealed.
Was it worth it? After 10 years of asking, it certainly seems like it, but not everyone in the Dead by Daylight community is thrilled with how the reveal came to be.
“NEVER STOPPED BELIEVING THAT IT’D HAPPEN ONE DAY,” one Reddit user stated.
“You’re telling me Jason was standing still staring at that f****ss cabin for 13 hours?” another said.
MY LIVE REACTION TO THE JASON REVEAL! pic.twitter.com/eO31yVWt4b
— SpooknJukes (@SpooknJukes) May 23, 2026
— Outcast Andrew (@OutcastAndrew) May 23, 2026
“I’m both happy it’s Jason finally being added, but underwhelmed by his reveal,” someone else replied. “This entire setup really felt like it had nothing to do with anything related to him. The whole stream felt very analogue horror, and all of the teasers on Twitter echoed that.”
There is some concern that the Friday the 13th Dead by Daylight crossover will be limited to Jason Voorhees as the Killer and won’t include any Survivors or even maps, but most are still trying to process seeing the machete-wielding slasher included at all.
Tangled rights revolving around Jason and Friday the 13th are rumored to have been the cause of his lack of presence in Dead by Daylight for years. It’s even something Behaviour has commented on in the past, with game director Mathieu Cote calling the situation a “legal quagmire” and “tar pit” during a conversation with The King in 2023. Now, however, whatever issues keeping the horror icon from joining the likes of Killers like Freddy Krueger, Chucky, Ghostface, Dracula, Michael Myers, and Leatherface have been put to rest.
Jason I knew you were the anniversary killer see check my phone https://t.co/7hYDvHYmyE pic.twitter.com/wVhN39lV1O
— Chainsaw Man for DBD (@ChainsawMan4DBD) May 23, 2026
LETS GOOOOOO!!!! pic.twitter.com/0royYHj8LQ
— Turkey 🔜 DBD EVENT 💕 (@QuestionedTurke) May 23, 2026
Jason joins Dead by Daylight as its anniversary Killer June 16. We’ll learn more about how he’ll finally enter the Fog in the coming weeks, but until then, you can see what Behaviour had to tell us about its live-service secrets, and you can also learn about the Soulslike spin-off the team has been dreaming about.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
