Dead by Daylight’s “The Cannibal” features unique cosmetics earned through gameplay. If players sacrifice any ofDead by Daylight’s four original survivors— Dwight, Meg, Claudette, and Jake — a total of 25 times, special head cosmetics are unlocked.
These cosmetic skins forDead by Daylight’s Leatherfaceresemble the survivors' faces and gift players with trophies of their victims. But while this may be a neat mechanic relevant to the cannibalistic killer’s iconic methods, these face masks have been weaponized in theDead by Daylightcommunity and Behaviour Interactive has decidedly taken action to thwart it.
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The second half ofDead by Daylight’s mid-chapter developer updatenotes starts with an important message for players. Leatherface’s unlockable masks will be confiscated from the game when the new mid-chapter update launches due to the controversy and harassment they have stirred. Behaviour does not go into detail as to what harassment has been observed, and what exact capacity these masks have been involved. Instead, the harassment is described vaguely with these masks “used as a tool to spread hate.”
However, the game’s community is well aware of the racist and racially insensitive harassment that Behaviour is referring to with these masks, particularly with the use of Leatherface’s cosmetic mask that is supposed to resembleDead by Daylight’s Claudette. Concerned fans and players in the community have addressed their issues with the cosmetic before, with Claudette’s Smartface mask for Leatherface referred to as a form of “blackface” when used for harassment.
As this was not Behaviour’s intent when earnablecosmetic masks for Leatherface were added toDead by Daylight, it states that this was “disheartening to hear.” Behaviour has chosen to remove all four of these unlockable masks fromDead by Daylightas a result of the unfortunate connotation ascribed to them now, and many players believe this to be an agreeable decision on the developer’s part.
Some players will ultimately not be affected either way by this choice, whether they have known about the cosmetics and their issues or not. But either way it may hopefully be a small balm to those who have suffered harassment and demonstrates that Behaviour and many players in its community “absolutely condemn this behaviour” inDead by Daylight. The game has had many controversies and problems within its community, though this is at least a step in the right direction in terms of preventative action from the developers.
Dead by Daylightis available for Mobile, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
