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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/RyeLucario on 2025-05-13 14:51:21+00:00.

Dead by Daylight is a game with nearly a decade’s worth of history, and likewise, nearly a decade’s worth of drama. There are so many things that have happened with this title that there could be multiple writeups made about it here. Massive leaks, NFT scandals, poorly-designed characters breaking the game, I could go on. But today, I wanted to look over something that has largely remained undiscussed since it all went down. And that’s how an unlockable cosmetic turned Leatherface from a slasher icon into a symbol of bigotry within Dead by Daylight.

Death Is Not An Escape

To give a quick rundown of the game itself for those unfamiliar, Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game developed by Behaviour Interactive (who I will be referring to as “BHVR” going forward) and initially published by Starbreeze Studios until 2018. It was released on June 14th 2016, and has kept going along since adding new content over the years. The basic gameplay loop revolves around 4 Survivor players attempting to repair generators to escape the trial while one person playing the Killer tries to stop them by placing them on meat hooks to sacrifice them to The Entity.

It’s become something of a “Smash Bros. for horror gaming” in that if you can think of a character from horror media, they’re almost definitely in Dead by Daylight (or probably will be given enough time), but this wasn’t always the case as back in the early years, the most the game had in terms of licensed content was The Halloween Chapter and Bill from Left 4 Dead as a Survivor, which made it all the more bigger of a deal when it was announced Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was joining as the game’s second licensed killer.

Leatherface, and “Smartface”

Leatherface was officially released on September 14th, 2017 and very quickly became the hot topic of the community. Of course, this partly because he was the brand new Killer and also the second-ever licensed Killer addition, but there were also several discussions around the… oddities of it all. The game already had a chainsaw-wielding Killer in the form of The Hillbilly, who is clearly based off Leatherface, and their powers were very similar in that they were chainsaws that needed to be charged in order to perform an insta-downing attack. So similar in fact that for three years, their powers both shared all but two add-ons (items that could be equipped with a Killer’s power to buff it in some way) until Hillbilly got a rework that saw all of his add-ons redone. Leatherface also had what would become one of the game’s most widely used Killer perks for a time, Barbecue and Chilli (or just BBQ) which would reveal all Survivors for a short time after hooking one as well as granting a stacking bonus to all Bloodpoints (currency earned from playing that can be used to level up characters and unlock items, add-ons, offerings or perks on characters) earned from the trial.

However, players also noticed that there were four different “locked” cosmetics in Leatherface’s head customization. While there were already unlockable cosmetics in the form of the Prestige outfits, pieces of the character’s default outfit covered in blood earned by “prestiging” your character three consecutive times after reaching level 50, they never appeared like that in the customization menu. The intrigue was sparked, and it didn’t take too long to figure out what these were and how to obtain them. Each mask corresponded to one of the four original Survivors; Dwight Fairfield, Meg Thomas, Claudette Morel and Jake Park. Sacrificing 25 players playing as one of these characters would unlock their respective mask. Leaderface for Dwight, Athleteface for Meg, Survivorface for Jake and (most importantly for this discussion) Smartface for Claudette.

Almost immediately, there was discussion being had over these cosmetics, in particular “Smartface” due to the connotation of blackface (and to a lesser degree, “Survivorface”, due to Jake Park being Asian and thus potentially leading into yellowface). While Leatherface wearing the faces of his victims is a core part of his character and having these cosmetics in the first place was a really cool idea of incorporating it into the game, people were worried that it would be used in bad faith and even asked for this cosmetic in particular to be removed. However, these debates weren’t really widespread at the time, as most of the discussion around Leatherface was whether he was good or not, how OP his perks were, ect. ect. While this topic was being talked about back then, it was mostly outweighed by the other elements of his release at the time, and would largely be forgotten about when the Nightmare on Elm Street chapter released just a bit later (which could honestly be its own writeup…).

Over the years, the discussion around this cosmetic would come up again and again, usually with one person worried about its unfortunate implications, then a few others arguing for its place in the game in accordance with Leatherface’s lore as well as the gameplay advantages it could bring (combined with Leatherface’s prestige outfit, it made Leatherface in general significantly darker and potentially harder to spot when approaching a Survivor), and then it would be lost to the sea of posts complaining about how this thing is OP or that thing should be buffed… until eventually, things reached a breaking point.

Rise of the Bigoted Bubbas

Starting around November and December 2021, discussions about Smartface began to come up in the community at large once again thanks to a growing number of cases where Black content creators, or even players just playing as black Survivors in game, were targeted specifically in-game by Leatherface players using the Smartface cosmetic. In addition to only going after these players, staying nearby or in front of the hook to camp them until they died, there were also various reports of these players going into these streamer’s chats or onto their Steam profiles to leave racist remarks, insults and slurs. I unfortunately can’t find most of the Twitter discussion revolving this anymore, as either most of the tweets seem to be gone or hard to find in the wake of Twitter’s… everything. But here’s a screenshot from one of these content creators, tanibeax, which would kickstart this discussion in full as well as this post from thesistakaren showing her facing off against one of these players capping it off with saying:

“There will always be people who use this cosmetic to act out racist fantasies. Reporting each individual won’t change that. It’s past time to take away the tool.”

sistakaren, along with Tani and a number of other Black DBD content creators would take part in a 36 minute video delving into the cosmetic’s inclusion and the problems it creates which I will link here if you want more perspective on this from those that are the most affected by it.

Once again, a lot of community discussion around this topic was very split, with some thinking people were overreacting over what was probably just a small portion of the playerbase and that there was no issue with its inclusion and even going so far as to say the controversy was completely fabricated, while others were more empathetic to the streamers and players affected by the behavior of those willing to use it as a hateful weapon. But ultimately, one could not deny that Smartface was indeed being used as a method of bigotry even if not by the larger playerbase, and BHVR would finally took action.

Bye Bye Masks

On January 3rd, 2022, BHVR would release the second part of their January 2022 Developer Update, going over more details about what would be changed in the next mid-chapter patch. Above the changes to various Perks and Killer power add-ons was a message regarding the Leatherface masks. Mainly, that all of them, not just Smartface, would be removed in this patch.

Members of the community have shared their experiences with people targeting and harassing them while using some of these masks. These reports were disheartening to hear, and we absolutely condemn this behaviour. We are not comfortable having these masks in the game when they are used as a tool to spread hate.

Since there were Leatherface players who did like the masks for non-racially charged reasons, they offered a compensation for them. Any player who had at least one of the unlockable masks in their inventory would…

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