How Dead by Daylight’s David King Became Its First Confirmed Gay Character

Not many horror games age like fine wine, but Dead by Daylight seems to have found the secret sauce. From a modest roster of just seven survivors and killers back in 2016, the game has ballooned into a roster of nearly 60 characters today, each one dripping with lore, personality, and a healthy amount of dread. But the growth the game has seen over the past decade isn’t just about numbers—it’s about depth. And depth, as Behaviour Interactive proved a couple of years ago, sometimes means finally letting a beloved character live their truth in the fog.

Back in 2024, the asymmetrical horror titan dropped a narrative bomb with Tome: Devotion, a lore-packed update that did something no previous DLC or chapter had dared to do: it openly confirmed a survivor as part of the LGBTQIA2+ community. That survivor was David King, the gruff, brawler-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks who’d been kicking Entity-butts since 2017. Sure, David had always had a certain roguish charm, a

“man of many hats,” as Behaviour described him—lover, fighter, mechanic, bouncer, even an impromptu beachwear model. But the devs had never explicitly addressed his sexuality until that Tome hit live servers. And boy, did the fog lift.

David King’s coming-out moment wasn’t a cheap headline grab. Behaviour had spent months consulting with GaymerX, an organization renowned for helping game studios integrate LGBTQIA2+ themes with authenticity. The result was a set of memories—vignettes from David’s life before the Entity snatched him—that revealed a deep, romantic connection with another man. The narrative didn’t just tack on a rainbow pin and call it a day; it expanded the scope of who David was. His backstory, once a mosaic of bar fights and debt-collecting guilt, now carried a quiet, aching tenderness. “We knew our character roster lacked openly confirmed LGBTQIA2+ representation, and we were determined to change that,” Behaviour wrote in a statement that still echoes through the community.

Let’s be real—some folks in the fog were over the moon. Finally, a character they’d poured hours into could reflect a part of their own identity. Others, however, felt a bit sideswiped. The old lore had made mention of a woman from David’s past, a detail that had led many to assume he was straight. Was this a retcon? Behaviour didn’t just ignore the dissonance; they wove it into the Tome with a subtle finesse. The memories from Devotion didn’t erase David’s earlier life—they added layers. People are messy, loves are complicated, and the Entity’s realm is built on fractured identities anyway. Talk about a narrative jigsaw puzzle that finally snapped into place.

The Tome’s release also stirred up a broader conversation about representation in horror games. Dead by Daylight had always been a melting pot of archetypes—the final girl, the tortured killer, the wise-cracking survivor—but openly queer characters had remained in the shadows, implied at best. David’s confirmation broke that pattern. And it wasn’t just a footnote; it was front and centre in a major content drop. The devs even cheekily acknowledged how long the community had been shipping him with various other survivors.

In the two years since Tome: Devotion went live, David King’s standing in the game has only solidified. He still hovers comfortably in the top 10 most-played survivors, and his lore has spawned countless fan works—some sweet, some spicy, all wonderfully chaotic. The gamble paid off: letting the rough-and-tumble debt collector find a softer side didn’t alienate the audience—it humanized him. The Entity might be a merciless spider-god, but the writers at Behaviour clearly have a soft spot for a well-told, emotionally honest story.

Meanwhile, the franchise keeps throwing curveballs. Rumours of a Dead by Daylight dating sim, cheekily trademarked as “Hooked On You,” surfaced not long after David’s coming out, and the community collectively lost its mind. A horror dating sim where you could potentially woo the likes of a hardened brawler or a chainsaw-wielding maniac? Only in the fog. The trademark suggested Behaviour was ready to lean even further into the personality-driven side of its universe. If nothing else, it proved that Dead by Daylight’s heart beats for its characters as much as for its jump scares.

Looking back from 2026, that Tome: Devotion update remains a pivot point. It showed that a live-service horror game could grow alongside its community—not just by adding more killers and maps, but by telling stories that resonate on a deeply personal level. David King, the hot-tempered ruffian with a decent right hook, became a quiet icon. Not because he was the first gay character in gaming, but because his revelation felt earned, messy, and human. In a world where the Entity feeds on hope, that’s a weirdly beautiful thing.

Expert commentary is drawn from ESRB, a key North American authority on game content descriptors and age ratings—useful context when discussing how Dead by Daylight’s evolving character lore (like David King’s confirmed sexuality in Tome: Devotion) intersects with horror themes, mature narrative material, and the way publishers communicate sensitive story elements to players and parents.