Jason Voorhees to Join Dead by Daylight on June 16, 2026

Jason Voorhees, the iconic slasher villain from the Friday the 13th film series, will join the roster of playable killers in the asymmetrical horror game Dead by Daylight on June 16, 2026. The announcement came from developer Behaviour Interactive following a 13-hour livestream that ended with a live-action teaser trailer showing the character in his signature hockey mask and wielding a machete.

The addition of Jason Voorhees fulfills a long-standing demand from the game’s community. Since its launch in 2016, Dead by Daylight has featured numerous horror movie antagonists, including Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, and Ghostface. Jason had been a notable absence, largely due to complex legal disputes over the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise. A lawsuit between original screenwriter Victor Miller and director Sean S. Cunningham, which concluded in 2021, left the rights fragmented and stalled many projects.

Those legal issues also affected Friday the 13th: The Game, a 2017 asymmetrical multiplayer title that directly competed with Dead by Daylight. That game was delisted from digital storefronts in 2023 and its servers shut down in 2024. In 2024, Horror Inc....