Is Dead by Daylight headed back to the Upside Down? Last year the Stranger Things DLC was pulled from stores when Netflix didn’t renew their contract with the game. While the characters stayed in the game if you already owned them, the Hawkins Laboratory map was removed. The perks from each character were renamed and put into base game perks. Over the weekend it was reported by DBDLeaks on Twitter that Netflix had contacted Behaviour Entertainment about a new chapter and getting their previous one back into stores. The new chapter would see Vecna, the big bad from season 4 join the game. On July 27,2022, the last part was debunked, meaning that Vecna probably is not coming to the game. The other stuff reported could still be happening though.
Investigating Stranger Thins leak right now as 'Vecna' model turned out to be fanmade. Parts of evidence provided supporting this leak is still legit for me. I would take it with grain of salt right now, although as I said, I still don't have enough information to fully debunk it
— DBDLeaks (@LeaksDbd) June 27, 2022
If the content is added back into the game, there is probably going to be confusion over the perks. As mentioned, they were renamed and made part of the base game, so would they then go back to their characters with the original name? Would these survivors have no perks? Steve, Nancy, and the Demogorgon came with the DLC and each one had some cosmetics you could purchase on top of the characters. One cosmetic was Johnathon. If the DLC does come back, could we eventually have new cosmetics, like Joyce, Hopper, Robyn, or Murray? It’s possible that they’d need the actors’ agreement on top of Netflix’s or else we’d get models that don’t match the characters, like Laurie Strode or the original Quentin Smith.
But Why?
Netflix has been focusing more on gaming, to the point it was part of Summer Game Fest. Between Netflix raising the price of their service, on top of their content being offensive to some groups, the company has been losing a lot of subscribers. They lost so much revenue that they laid off over 400 people in the last few months. It’s possibly they are looking for more revenue sources. Getting the DLC back into Dead by Daylight makes a lot of sense as a source of cash flow. It’s already done and basically won’t cost them anything, plus it is great advertising for the show. Stranger Things is one of the most popular franchises they have. It’s ending with season 5, but there have been talks of a spinoff potentially happening. The final episodes of season 4 premiere on July 1.
Are you excited for the prospect of a return to the Hawkins Lab? Maybe a reworked Hawkins Lab like they’ve done with Lampkin Lane? Personally I’d be excited. Hawkins Lab could be difficult to run, but it was a very unique map.
