Synchronizing Your Dead by Daylight Progress Across Platforms

Dead by Daylight offers one of the most comprehensive cross-platform experiences in modern gaming, allowing players to maintain their progress across multiple systems. Whether you primarily play on PC but occasionally jump into console versions, or you switch between platforms regularly, the cross-progression system ensures your hard-earned progression, cosmetics, and currency follow you everywhere. This guide provides a detailed walkthrough of the synchronization process, explaining everything you need to know to seamlessly connect your accounts.

Understanding What Cross-Progression Offers

Cross-progression in Dead by Daylight represents a unified account experience that consolidates your gameplay achievements, cosmetics, character progression, and in-game currency across multiple gaming platforms. This feature eliminates the frustration of starting from scratch when switching devices, making the game far more accessible to players who engage across different systems.

The system works by creating a central cloud-based repository where all your game data synchronizes. Once properly configured, your survivor levels, killer progression, unlocked perks, purchased cosmetics, and accumulated currency become available on any platform where you log in with your linked account. This represents a significant quality-of-life improvement for players invested in the Dead by Daylight ecosystem.

Supported Platforms for Account Linking

Dead by Daylight’s cross-progression infrastructure supports an extensive array of platforms, ensuring that almost any player can integrate their accounts regardless of their primary gaming setup. The participating platforms include:

• Steam (PC)
• Epic Games Store
• Windows Store
• PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5
• Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S
• Nintendo Switch

This comprehensive platform coverage demonstrates the developers’ commitment to creating an inclusive gaming experience where players aren’t locked into specific hardware ecosystems.

Establishing Your Behaviour Account Foundation

Before any cross-progression synchronization can occur, you must establish a Behaviour account, which serves as the central hub for all your account management and linking activities. This account acts as the authentication mechanism that ties together all your different platform accounts into one cohesive profile.

Creating a Behaviour account is straightforward and free. Navigate to the official Behaviour account creation portal, provide your email address, create a secure password, and complete any necessary verification steps. Once your account exists, you’ll have access to the central account management dashboard where all linking and synchronization occurs. This foundational step is non-negotiable for accessing cross-progression features.

The Account Linking Process

After establishing your Behaviour account, the next phase involves connecting all your gaming platform accounts to this central profile. This linking process creates the bridges between your separate platform accounts, allowing data to flow between them.

Begin by logging into your newly created Behaviour account. Within the account dashboard, you’ll find a connections or account linking section where you can add your various gaming platform credentials. For each platform where you own Dead by Daylight, you’ll need to authorize the connection by signing in with that platform’s credentials. This authentication process verifies your ownership and prevents unauthorized account linking.

The platforms available for linking appear as options within your Behaviour account dashboard. Simply select each platform you use, complete the authentication process, and the system registers the connection. It’s important to link all platforms where you currently play Dead by Daylight, as this ensures comprehensive synchronization of your entire game inventory and progression.

Activating Cross-Progression Synchronization

Linking your accounts and enabling cross-progression are separate but complementary actions. Many players mistakenly believe that linking alone enables full synchronization, but an additional step must be completed on each platform to activate the actual data sync process.

Once your accounts are linked through your Behaviour account, navigate to the Dead by Daylight page within your account dashboard. Look for an option labeled “Enable cross-progression” or similar terminology. When you click this option, you’ll be prompted to select which platform you want to begin synchronizing with. The order in which you select platforms doesn’t matter, as the system will eventually consolidate all data into your unified account.

Follow the on-screen instructions, which typically involve confirming that you want to import data from the selected platform. After completing this process, you repeat the same steps for every other platform where you play Dead by Daylight. This repetition ensures that data from each platform is properly imported into your synchronized cloud account.

What Gets Synchronized Across Platforms

Understanding exactly what information transfers during synchronization helps clarify the scope of this feature:

• Character levels for both survivors and killers
• Unlocked perks and teachable perks
• Purchased cosmetics and character skins
• Event cosmetics and seasonal rewards
• Iridescent Shards (earned in-game currency)
• Auric Cells (premium currency, with Nintendo Switch exceptions)
• DLC purchases (except those purchased specifically through Nintendo eShop)
• Progression through the Rift and seasonal content

When multiple accounts contain different levels for the same character, the system applies the highest level from any synced account, preventing level reductions. This approach ensures players never lose progress during synchronization.

Important Considerations for Nintendo Switch Players

Nintendo Switch users experience slightly different functionality compared to players on other platforms, necessitating specific awareness of these limitations. The Switch version of Dead by Daylight has restricted cross-progression capabilities due to platform-specific technical constraints and business arrangements.

Specifically, Auric Cells—the premium currency used for cosmetic purchases—cannot be shared with Nintendo Switch from other platforms, nor can they be transferred from Switch to other systems. However, DLC can flow in one direction: DLC purchased on other platforms can appear on your Switch account once synchronized, but you cannot share DLC purchased through the Switch version with other platforms.

Additionally, achievements and trophies remain platform-specific and won’t transfer between systems, though they may unlock automatically if the underlying progression requirements are met through synchronized data. These limitations reflect the unique technical environment of Nintendo’s gaming ecosystem.

Troubleshooting Synchronization Issues

Occasionally, players encounter error messages or apparent synchronization failures when attempting to enable cross-progression. However, the system sometimes functions correctly despite displaying error notifications. If you encounter such messages, verify in-game whether your progression actually synchronized before concluding that the process failed.

Common issues and their resolutions include:

• Missing platforms in the sync menu—verify all accounts are properly linked in your Behaviour account dashboard
• Data not appearing after synchronization—log completely out of the game and restart to refresh the cached data
• Conflicting data between platforms—the system prioritizes the highest account level, so progression shouldn’t decrease
• Currency discrepancies—different currency types (Shards vs. Cells) combine during synchronization, though platform-specific exceptions apply

If problems persist after attempting these solutions, consulting the official support resources or community forums may provide additional guidance specific to your situation.

Managing Your Synchronized Account

After successfully enabling cross-progression, managing your account involves understanding a few key principles. Once you sync an account on a particular platform, you cannot unlink that provider account. This permanence prevents accidental disconnections but requires careful consideration before completing synchronization.

Your synchronized account maintains a single progression database across all platforms. Progression earned on any platform immediately becomes available on others after the next login. If you earn enough experience to reach level 50 on a survivor while playing on PlayStation, that achievement instantly applies to your Steam account as well.

The Sync Button within your account management serves as a refresh mechanism. It verifies that your in-game account properly connects to your Behaviour Account and updates the information flowing between the two systems. Use this periodically if you experience any synchronization delays.

Cross-Play Versus Cross-Progression Clarification

Many players conflate two distinct but complementary features: cross-play and cross-progression. While related, they serve different functions within Dead by Daylight.

Cross-play enables matchmaking across platforms, allowing survivors on PlayStation to queue alongside killers on Steam, and vice versa. This feature comes enabled by default and can be disabled through the Online settings within the game itself. Cross-play expands your potential player pool, reducing queue times and creating more dynamic gameplay experiences.

Cross-progression, by contrast, focuses on account data synchronization rather than matchmaking mechanics. You can have cross-play enabled without having cross-progression, allowing you to play against different platform players while maintaining separate progression on each system. However, the ideal configuration enables both features for maximum flexibility and convenience.

Practical Implementation Steps Summary

To synthesize the complete process into actionable steps:

1. Create a Behaviour account at the official portal if you don’t already have one
2. Log into your Behaviour account and navigate to the connections section
3. Authenticate and link each gaming platform where you own Dead by Daylight
4. Go to the Dead by Daylight page and locate the “Enable cross-progression” option
5. Select the first platform and follow the import authorization workflow
6. Repeat the enable process for each additional platform where you play
7. Verify that your progression appears correctly by launching the game on each platform
8. Understand the platform-specific limitations, particularly regarding Nintendo Switch

Maximizing Cross-Progression Benefits

Once synchronization is active, adopting certain practices maximizes the value of this feature. Play competitively on whatever platform offers the best experience for your current situation—whether that’s pursuing ranked progression on your main platform or casually grinding on a laptop when traveling. Your progression unifies seamlessly.

Leverage the platform diversity to access platform-specific events or cosmetics while maintaining your overall progression. Complete seasonal Rift challenges on whichever platform you prefer, knowing the completion progress synchronizes universally. This flexibility transforms how you engage with Dead by Daylight across your gaming ecosystem.

Understanding these mechanics empowers you to make strategic account management decisions aligned with your gaming habits and platform preferences, ensuring you extract maximum value from Dead by Daylight’s remarkably comprehensive cross-platform infrastructure.