It’s done. After years of licensing nightmares, a dedicated game that came and went, rights disputes that seemed like they’d never get resolved, and a fanbase that’s been asking for this since 2016 — Jason Voorhees is officially coming to Dead by Daylight. Behaviour Interactive confirmed it on May 23, 2026 via a teaser trailer following a genuinely brilliant 12-hour livestream of a lone cabin in the woods. The hockey mask is coming to The Fog on June 16, 2026. Chapter 40: Jason is real, and it’s almost here.
How Behaviour Interactive Revealed It
The announcement itself was pure horror marketing done right. Cryptic teasers started appearing on social media over the previous 24 hours, and then Behaviour kicked off a 12-hour YouTube livestream showing nothing but a quiet woodland cabin — atmospheric, eerie, and completely still except for passing cyclists, barking dogs in the distance, and the occasional flash of lightning. If you knew your Friday the 13th lore, the setting made it obvious what was coming. If you didn’t, you just watched a cabin for hours waiting for something to happen.
In the final minutes of the stream, the camera revealed itself to be the POV of Jason the entire time. He walked into the cabin, grabbed his iconic hockey mask and machete, and looked at his own reflection in a dirty window. The brief teaser that followed confirmed the June 16 release date. It’s the kind of slow-burn reveal that respects horror fans enough not to spoil the moment — and it worked.
Why This Took So Long
This isn’t a case of Behaviour Interactive simply not wanting to add Jason. The Friday the 13th franchise has been caught in one of gaming’s most complicated rights situations for years, and understanding it makes the announcement hit even harder.
The short version: the rights to Jason Voorhees as a character and the Friday the 13th franchise as a whole were split between multiple parties following legal disputes between the original creators and producers. That mess directly killed IllFonic’s Friday the 13th: The Game — the 2017 asymmetric multiplayer title that had a genuinely similar structure to Dead by Daylight. IllFonic’s game was delisted from storefronts in 2023 and its servers were shut down in 2024 precisely because the ongoing rights dispute made new content impossible to develop and the licensing situation untenable.
The situation finally changed in 2024 when Horror Inc. announced that the rights issues had been resolved. They launched what they called the Jason Universe initiative — a structured plan to bring Jason back across multiple entertainment mediums simultaneously, including TV shows, films, and video games. The version of Jason arriving in Dead by Daylight is specifically tied to this Jason Universe project, which is why he’s wearing the updated hockey mask design rather than one of his earlier film-specific looks.
Jason’s History in Video Games
For a character this iconic, Jason’s video game appearances have been a surprisingly patchy history. His debut was all the way back in 1986 with Friday the 13th: The Computer Game on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum — an ambitious adventure horror title for its time that had players tracking down improvised weapons and trying to stop Jason before he got to their friends. Three years later in 1989, he appeared in Friday the 13th for the NES, a side-scrolling action game that’s become something of a cult classic thanks to its brutal difficulty and famously punishing gameplay.
Then came a long drought. Jason didn’t make a meaningful video game appearance for over 25 years, until a memorable cameo in Mortal Kombat X’s first Kombat Pack in 2015 — a move that reminded everyone just how naturally he translates into a fighting game context, complete with his full horror movie moveset.
Then came IllFonic’s Friday the 13th: The Game in 2017, which was the closest thing to a proper, full-scale Jason game in decades. The asymmetric multiplayer structure — one player as Jason, up to seven as camp counselors — made it the natural spiritual predecessor to where Jason is heading now. The game had its moments and a dedicated fanbase, but the rights dispute killed its content updates and eventually the servers entirely. Dead by Daylight’s Jason is, in many ways, the successor to what IllFonic tried to build.
What We Know About Jason in Dead by Daylight — And What We Don’t
Behaviour Interactive has confirmed the June 16 launch date and the Jason Universe version of the character, but beyond that they’re keeping abilities, perks, and map details locked down until the Dead by Daylight 10th Anniversary stream on June 14 in Montreal. That stream is expected to be packed with announcements, and a full Jason reveal — abilities, perks, potentially a Camp Crystal Lake map — is almost certainly the centrepiece of the event.
What’s already known is that Jason will be available on the Public Test Beta from May 26, which means dedicated PC players will be able to get their hands on him and start piecing together his full kit before the June 16 live release. The PTB almost always leaks full ability details within hours, so the community won’t have to wait long. A 10th Anniversary event window runs June 16 through July 7 alongside the launch, featuring exclusive cosmetics and rewards.
The Bigger Picture — Dead by Daylight at 10 Years
Dead by Daylight launched in June 2016 with a small roster and a concept that nobody was entirely sure would work. Nearly ten years later, it has close to 40 Killers, licensed characters from Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alien, Stranger Things, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, Alan Wake, Castlevania, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Tokyo Ghoul, and many more. Michael Myers was the first licensed horror icon added to the game. Jason Voorhees is arguably the biggest one that was still missing.
The irony is that Michael Myers is no longer available to purchase due to licence expiration — meaning the Halloween Chapter that started everything is gone, while the character who was always Jason’s biggest pop culture rival is about to become the game’s headline feature for its 10th birthday. If Behaviour can keep the Michael Myers licence issue from repeating itself with Jason, this addition has the potential to be as permanent and defining as any character in the game’s roster. Camp Crystal Lake belongs in The Fog. It’s long overdue, and it finally arrived.
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