Well, the two icons are coming together to celebrate a decade of being solid entertainers in their own right with a crossover event that sees some of your favorites from The Division 2 stepping into the Dead by Daylight universe, bringing cosmetics, trophies, and more to the table. The event is going to span a couple of weeks, ending on July 14th.

The free content includes The Deathslinger and The Huntress skins, alongside a couple of backpack trophies for you to pick up, while the premium content includes The Oni, The Trapper, backpack trophies, and exotic caches for you to collect. It’s been a rather busy time for Dead by Daylight, what with the recent addition of Jason Voorhees and a feature film in the works. Meanwhile, The Division 2 confirmed Year 8 earlier this year, much to the delight of its fans.

You can see the new characters in action in the trailer below. It’s rather short, but it’s still worth a watch for the new additions, nonetheless.

The film already has a director attached to it, and its script is locked in. What’s more, Behaviour’s own Mathieu Cote, the game’s director, has told Crecente that it’s planned for a late 2027 release.

That’s a bit of a wait, we know, but we think it’s hardly a surprise that a game that has been rooted in popular culture is making the switch to the silver screen. The recent addition of Jason Voorhees to its roster is a great example, and we were quite impressed with how his unique set of skills was integrated into the gameplay loop. There have been several other crossovers in the past, and this is probably a sweetener to the news of layoffs at Behaviour, which left a sour taste in our mouths when we told you about them.

Details on the cast and plot are scarce at the moment, but you can be sure we’re going to be shouting about it all from the rooftops when they surface. Unless there’s a stalker waiting for us to do just that, of course. A trailer would have been nice but we expect that’s coming a lot later down the line for now.

Dead by Daylight Studio Announces Layoffs in Mobile and External Development Teams

Keeping in line with Jason’s frightening capabilities from the Friday the 13th movies, Dead by Daylight’s The Slasher is equipped with the Omnipresent Evil power. This allows him to become invisible and get the Undetectable trait, which makes it impossible for survivor players to find your scratch marks. However, despite the enhanced stealth offered by Omnipresent Evil, The Slasher still has to be careful about the routes he travels, since survivors will still be able to spot footprints.

Along with this, The Slasher has two special abilities: Impaling Throw and Jump Scare. The former allows the killer to grab a projectile from nearby Scrap Piles or Hooks to throw at survivors, injuring them and knocking them back in the process. The Slasher can also impale or pin down a survivor by knocking them into an object or surface. If a survivor is healthy, they can only be impaled this way when a Hook projectile is used.

The Jump Scare ability kicks in when The Slasher is in Omnipresent Evil mode. When used, players can instantly teleport to Pallets, Breakable Walls, or Vault Locations and perform a Break or Vault action. When this is used, the killer also gets to see the location of nearby Survivors.

The Slasher also comes with 3 new perks – Hex: Scared to Death, Silent Shadow, and Rampage. When equipped with Hex: Scared to Death, hooking victims can awaken a Dull Totem, which allows the killer to cause nearby Survivors to scream and temporarily slow down whenever a Pallet is broken during a chase. Silent Shadow gives the killer Undetectable for a short duration after hooking a survivor. If all Generators have been repaired, the killer gets Undetectable permanently.

Rampage allows the killer to amass tokens by breaking pallets and breakable walls, up to a total of 13. A token is used up whenever the killer is blinded or stunned, giving them a small Haste boost.

Now that Jason is out, Behaviour Interactive will follow it up with the release of The Life Road DLC, which will introduce the game’s first indigenous survivor – Shane Wiigwaas. The DLC is slated for release on June 25th. August will see the release of the first Dead by Daylight chapter that was developed by the studio in collaboration with its community, Chorus of Sin.

Later in the year, the asymmetrical horror PvP game will get even more content, like Art the Clown from the Terrifier movies in November. 2027 will kick things up a notch by bringing in a new chapter based on the narrative-driven collaboration Behaviour Interactive did with Supermassive Games – The Casting of Frank Stone.

Dead by Daylight is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and the Nintendo Switch.

It really sets the scene, with a gloomy hut lit up only by the thunder from a raging storm before Jason walks in to grab his machete and mask, a reflection of which you see while a very familiar score rounds it all off. We really liked it, and that was only part of why we’re so excited to try him out for ourselves.

What really delighted us was information about Jason’s skills, which involve stalking unsuspecting survivors via their footprints while remaining entirely unseen with his Omnipresent Evil ability. Meanwhile, Improvised Carnage gives him the ability to throw things he finds at retreating Survivors, with the ability to even pin them to a wall.

Expect more than a few jump scares and some horrifying kills when he drops into the public beta test build starting May 26th, before making his official debut on June 16, the game’s 10th anniversary.

“I think it was super optimism of the time during Covid-19,” he explained. “The industry grew so much because [people] had to stay at home, and video games were the easiest and cheaper way to be entertained. So they saw this huge increase in growth of the industry, and many investors poured money into the sector, so these publishers over-hired, over-invested. They hired too many people. They invested in projects that they shouldn’t have.”

“And when that additional demand subsided after Covid, the people running these companies saw the reality, that the industry went back to the original steady growth cog, that means that the growth became flat after a couple of years.”

He went on to note how the sheer number of people being laid off has been “really sad.” Despite this, however, Yoshida remains optimistic about the health of the industry in the future.

“People don’t talk about the number of people hired into the industry,” he said. “When you look at the number of people working at these companies even after layoffs, you might see the number of people is still growing. Meaning that these companies tend to hire when things are good.”

While it’s difficult to gauge whether Yoshida’s thoughts have much merit to them, many studios have announced new rounds of layoffs in the last month alone. Among these have been Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive, Iron Galaxy Studios, and Moss developer Polyarc Games. Epic Games also saw major layoffs affecting over 1,000 of its workers thanks to declining interest in Fortnite.

An industry veteran, Yoshida had worked for Sony since 1993, when he joined the initial PlayStation team under Ken Kutaragi. While he spent much of his time at the company working with first-party development teams, he would eventually move over to handling the company’s indie development support teams – a move which he noted was due to his disagreements with at-the-time Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan. Yoshida ultimately left the company in January 2025.

“A portion of Behaviour Interactive’s business has traditionally focused on external development partnerships. In recent months, demand for mobile and casual external development projects has declined,” said the spokesperson.

“As we conclude our remaining engagements and do not foresee comparable opportunities in the near term, we have made the decision to part ways with some colleagues. Those decisions are never easy, and we are grateful for the contributions of the affected employees, who have helped shape Behaviour and support our partners over the years.”

Interestingly, the layoffs come just weeks after the company acquired the studio behind 7 Days to Die. While the value of this deal wasn’t revealed, the company celebrated the acquisition, noting that the zombie survival game had seen more than 20 million sales since release.

Recent days have seen quite a few layoff announcements. Earlier this week, Iron Galaxy Studios announced a round, which reports indicate will end up affecting up to 90 of its employees.

“Today, Iron Galaxy Studios regrets to announce that we are reducing our company size. A number of teammates and friends are losing their jobs as we adjust to a new company structure. We are terribly sorry to lose them as we take steps to adapt to the climate of the video game industry. It’s time for us to evolve again,” announced the studio.

This month has also seen Polyarc Games—the studio behind VR title Moss—announcing layoffs as well. In a statement, the company said that it had to “significantly” reduce its size, and thanked the affected workers for having contributed their talents to the company.

Recent rumors have also indicated that Wuchang: Fallen Feathers developer Leenzee was facing layoffs. While the studio hasn’t made any statement about this so far, it appears that the studio wasn’t quite happy with the game’s reception, leading to the entire team that made it being laid off.

Just last month, Epic Games announced massive layoffs affecting more than 1,000 of its employees. Citing a “downturn in Fortnite engagement,” CEO Tim Sweeney said that the company was “spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles, puts us in a more stable place.”

Sweeney went on to note that, “We have taken a lot of bullets in a battle, which is only in the early days of paying off for ourselves and all developers.”

“What we now need to do is clear: build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events; accelerate developer tools with greater stability and capability as we evolve from Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN to Unreal Engine 6. And we’ll be kicking off the next generation of Epic with huge launch plans towards the end of the year,” he continued.

This roguelite action title has been revealed at the recent Xbox Partner showcase and is being developed by Behaviour Interactive. That’s kind of ironic since the heroes you’re going to be embodying seem like the worst-behaved bunch of protagonists we’ve seen in a while. They’re still quite effective, though, as their distinct personalities and skill sets allow them to sow chaos among enemy ranks. Considering the fact that they’re all versions of Sam from different universes, that’s a given.

You’re going to be teaming up with them via a five-player run-based gameplay loop that’s looking like quite an entertaining romp through visually impressive environments that are populated by threats that seem poised to give Sam(s) more than a few challenges to overcome. With Mental pulling the strings, expect some insane (pun intended) action, game-changing boons, and a whole lot of chaos when you dive into this one.

It doesn’t have a release date yet, but it’s definitely worth watching the reveal trailer below if you’re looking for some fun.

“We understand the heightened expectations of what we are being asked to deliver upon here,” said Pannell. “What I personally really love about this is somehow the zombie trope is so powerful that it’s such an all- encompassing thing that we just have to deliver on those expectations to the best of our ability. And that’s really our goal every day, is to try and reach that benchmark to work towards those goals. And yeah, it absolutely is a big responsibility for us to do that. But one of the things that we have as a result of this, is that we have a community with us, and we have a group of people who are on this journey with us. We’re not alone here. It wasn’t just comments from three years ago. And even now, we are doing small scale play tests with members of the community, with the team, to really try and fulfill those expectations and make sure that we deliver on the game that A, they thought it was going to be, and B, that we believe that it can be at the same time.”

“So we’re on a journey together. We may have not been loud to the world, but we’ve been very active with our community, talking to our community, making sure that we get their feedback whenever we can. And like I said, even through actual small scale playtesting already, which we’re doing regularly.”

As for how development has been going in light of the project having gotten wishlisted by more than 1.5 million Steam users, Pannell spoke about how there has also been a fair bit of scepticism surrounding the title, with some calling it “too good to be true”. He acknowledged that “people have been burned by things that have been released.” However, the studio’s ultimate goal is to “prove that we are making a real game, that it is awesome. We’re focusing on the fun, we’re focusing on the things that really matter to making a good quality, fun game that fulfills these expectations.”

Pannell then went on to speak about what sets Blight: Survival apart from other co-op games. While he doesn’t directly bring up “any obvious genres”, he noted that the title thrives on offering players risks and rewards for every combat encounter. This aspect of risk-and-reward, he noted, is a “key element of the overall driving part of many features in the game.” Generally speaking, Blight: Survival takes ideas from a variety of different genres, but action horror is where Pannell believes it lands closest.

“It is a combat driven game with elements of exploration, with extraction light elements that are in there, and other elements also from games of that genre that help us drive the internal tension and the risk the players take whenever they’re in a given space,” he explained.

While Blight: Survival will also feature extraction game elements, Pannell noted that the studio isn’t simply working on a clone of what we’ve seen in ARC Raiders, for example. “We have extraction elements,” he explained, “but it’s not driven exclusively as the extraction genre. And we’re also taking extraction influence from other types of games, like for example, Helldivers or Deep Rock Galactic, that have extraction components as a core part of the phase of the game.”

“Again, not a direct analog, but we have both elements of what we normally consider a round-based game with extraction, plus a pure extraction game too. We have both those elements in our game, and they work in harmony with each other over the course of your playtime.”

“The core game loop is you go in, you try and amass what you can, and you can always push for more, but you could always back out when you feel like you’ve got something that is meaningful.”

Blight: Survival is being developed for PC. However, there is still no release date, at least for now.

It sees Naoe investigating the disappearance and attacks on villagers in Harima. She must eventually deal with an “otherworldly” threat and master “unique mechanics” to survive. The quest is available from the Hideout and awards a free Trinket and Banner upon completion.

Of course, the store is where the remaining content resides. It offers a special pack with outfits, Trinkets, weapons and Maurice, the Clown’s undead horse, as a mount.

Interestingly, another collaboration was stealthily added – Balatro. Players can obtain a new Trinket/Amulet with a unique Legendary perk, causing a random affliction upon ending a combo. How you get it is unknown, but it’s definitely fitting for the deck-builder.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is available for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Check out our review and the post-launch roadmap here.

How this will work is completely unknown, but a teaser clip on Twitter showcases Naoe and Yasuke near a bonfire. Meanwhile, a figure in full armor with a flaming aura observes them from a distance. Both protagonists are in plain clothes, and the hashtag “#TheFogIsCalling” may tease some unique stealth mechanics. Time will tell, but as with any collaboration, expect limited-time rewards and paid cosmetics in the store.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Crossing three million players in roughly a week, its player count and spending “clearly” surpassed Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, per Ubisoft’s latest financials. Check out our review, where we awarded it a nine out of ten.

Even more content is on the way, including the second story quest in June, new difficulty settings, an alarm system for the open world, and much more. Check out the current post-launch roadmap here.