Dead by Daylight multiplayer and how to play with friends explained

Understanding Dead by Daylight multiplayer is crucial if you’re planning to play Behaviour Interactive’s asymmetric survival horror game. After all, it’s an online game centred around online play with fellow survivors if you’re trying to escape, or going in alone as a killer if you’re looking to hunt down and sacrifice other players.

So given how important a solid understanding of its workings are, we’re going to outline everything you need to know about Dead by Daylight multiplayer here. This includes a step-by-step walkthrough on adding and playing with friends. If you’re looking to use multiplayer though, you might first want to check if Dead by Daylight has crossplay, or if it needs Playstation Plus, should you be on console.

How multiplayer works in Dead by Daylight

Here’s an outline of how multiplayer works in Dead by Daylight. You’ll have two separate multiplayer queues available to you when playing – the Killer queue and Survivor queue. In order to join and play, you’ll need a stable internet connection to the game’s servers.

• Since there’s only one Killer per game, you’ll be automatically put into matchmaking once you join this queue and hit “Play.” From here, just play as the Killer to complete the match.
• If you’re a Survivor, you can either queue on your own, and be randomly matchmade with three other Survivors. Alternatively, you can queue with friends to play together.

Matchmaking will generally aim to place people of similar ranks and progression together to balance matches, though this doesn’t always work.

How to play with friends in Dead by Daylight

Playing with friends is fairly straightforward. First, click on “play as a Survivor”, this will take you to the prep screen prior to active matchmaking. From here, click the plus sign on any of the empty spaces in your party next to your character. Popup text to “Invite a friend” will appear if you hover over them. On clicking, your Friends list will open up, and you can select the friends you want to send an invite out to.

You can also open your Friends menu directly and invite individuals to your party that way. Click on the dual silhouette icon along the bottom of your interactive buttons from the main or prep menus to bring up your Friends list.

If you’re joining a friends’ party, you’ll get a notification when they send an invite. Click on the notification and accept the invite to join. If you don’t click the notification in time, open up the Friends menu and navigate over to the Requests tab and check under your Pending Invites.

How to add friends in Dead by Daylight

Adding friends is also pretty straightforward. Either, you can use the standard method for adding friends on your platform. For example if you’re playing on Steam, add a friend with their Steam Friend Code, and they should then appear on your friends list in-game.
Alternatively, you can open the Friends menu, and click on the silhouette with the plus icon to the right of your name at the top. Enter your friend’s profile name from here, and it’ll send them a request.

That covers everything you should need to know about Dead by Daylight multiplayer. If you’ve still got more burning questions about the game, and want to know if there are any Dead by Daylight split screen options or whether you can pick up Dead by Daylight on Game Pass, we’ve got you covered.