There really is an audience for asymmetrical multiplayer games inspired by the slasher film genre, and it’s enormous. To say the 4v1 horror game Dead by Daylight wasted no time conquering the Steam sales chart to become a bonafide hit for Behaviour Digital and its publishing partner Starbreeze wouldn’t adequately reflect what this game has achieved in its first week on Steam. Numbers are usually more effective at that, and in that case, we know it’s blown past the staggering 270,000 sales figure that was mentioned in this morning’s press release.

There’s another way to measure its success, and it’s simple. Dead by Daylight is in the black. Its development costs have been fully recouped, so it’s essentially free to continue making loads of cash until the (suddenly very likely) sequel comes to replace it. Only time will tell if its runaway success will benefit the competition — Friday the 13th: The Game in October, followed by Last Year in November — or if it’s set a stratospherically high bar they might have trouble reaching in the fall.

We’ll save that discussion for another time. For now, let’s celebrate another victory for the horror genre. And if you’re still on the fence about adding to that sales figure, Dead by Daylight is $17.99 on Steam (10% off) until July 4.

Now for the obligatory statements of congratulation…

“We couldn’t be happier to release Dead by Daylight as our first publishing partnership together with Behaviour,” said Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson Klint. “With this launch, we’ve proven that the concept we’ve developed with our own PAYDAY-franchise, can be replicated and utilized for other games. Taking the game to different events and seeing it on the top 5 most streamed titles on Twitch has been a thrill and a real ticket to the games success as a spectator friendly game. We look forward to seeing the game evolve and thrive in the community.”

“Our partnership with Starbreeze has been a great fit from the get go, they believed in our vision and gave us the creative freedom and support needed to make a massive statement out of the gate,” added Rémi Racine, CEO of Behaviour Interactive. “Behaviour Digital is a new studio where we invest in our own future, with Dead by Daylight being our first release, we couldn’t be prouder; we have been developing concepts around this theme for many years now and it’s great to trail blaze in this space. From the beginning, we conceived Dead by Daylight to be a community focused game, but the engagement from our players has been fantastic.”