Behaviour Interactive published its 10.2.0 Developer Update on September 14, 2026, and the headline number is the biggest perk shake-up Dead by Daylight has had in years: 58 perks are changing. The full patch notes are not out yet, but BHVR has confirmed the scale of the rework, the reasoning behind it, two finished perk designs, a new communication system, and the exact day you can play it.
Quick answer: The 10.2.0 PTB goes live on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, with the full patch notes published the same day, and closes September 21. It changes 58 perks in three groups: 26 affected by the Diminishing Returns system, 23 General Perks rebuilt for newer players, and 9 BHVR calls oppressive or unhealthy. Do No Harm and Knock Out are the only two reworks detailed so far, and the Survivor Intent System (pre-set in-match text callouts) makes its PTB debut. The PTB is Steam only. The live build today is still 10.1.2; 10.2.0 should reach live around October 6, though BHVR has not confirmed that.
Everything below comes from BHVR's own Developer Update and the official patch-notes archive, with current perk values read off the live 10.1.2 build. Where something is a community translation rather than an official announcement, this guide says so, because a lot of what is circulating today is not confirmed.
When does the DBD 10.2.0 PTB go live?
BHVR closed the Developer Update with an unambiguous date:
"The 10.2.0 PTB goes live tomorrow (Sept. 15), alongside full patch notes detailing every change and addition."
— Dead by Daylight Developer Update, September 14, 2026
That puts the PTB on Tuesday, September 15, 2026. Per the official wiki's PTB documentation it opens Tuesday evening Eastern Time and stays open for 6 days, closing Monday evening ET — so expect it to shut on September 21.
BHVR has not announced a live release date for 10.2.0. You can estimate one with unusual confidence, though, because the interval is documented rather than guessed. The wiki states the PTB is made available "on the Tuesday evening (ET) 3 weeks before the scheduled release of either the next Chapter or the next Mid-Chapter", and both 2026 cycles landed on exactly that:
| Update | PTB opened | Live release | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9.6.0 | Tuesday, April 7, 2026 | Tuesday, April 28, 2026 | 21 days |
| 10.1.0 | Tuesday, August 4, 2026 | Tuesday, August 25, 2026 | 21 days |
| 10.2.0 | Tuesday, September 15, 2026 | Not announced | 21 days lands on Tuesday, October 6 |
A documented three-week rule plus two consecutive cycles hitting it exactly makes October 6, 2026 the sensible expectation — but BHVR has not confirmed that date, and PTB feedback has delayed releases before. Treat it as the pattern, not a promise.
How do you play the DBD PTB?
The Public Test Build is a separate beta branch, and the platform restriction catches people out every cycle:
- Steam only. There is no PTB on the Epic Games Store, the Microsoft Store, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch or mobile. This is a Steam beta-branch feature, not a BHVR preference.
- Opt in through the game's properties. Right-click Dead by Daylight in your Steam library, open Properties, and select the public-test beta branch from the dropdown. Steam downloads the build and appends a public-test tag to the game's name.
- Opt out the same way to return to the live build.
The PTB also runs on a completely separate save file, copied from your live account roughly a week before it opens, and nothing you do there transfers back. To make testing painless, BHVR loads that save with 12,500 Auric Cells, 1,000,000 Bloodpoints, every character you own on Steam at Level 50 and Prestige 3 with all perks at Tier III, and 99 units of every offering, item and add-on.
That last part is the practical reason to bother: you can test all 58 changed perks at Tier III immediately, without grinding a single Bloodweb.
What is BHVR actually changing in 10.2.0?
The Developer Update breaks the 58 perks into three clearly separated buckets, and they add up exactly:
| Group | Perks | What BHVR is doing |
|---|---|---|
| Diminishing Returns rebalance | 26 | Updating effects that bypass or are minimised by Diminishing Returns, and buffing effects that can safely be reduced by it |
| General Perks | 23 | Buffs, effect changes and clearer wording, with Tier I and Tier II values moved closer to Tier III |
| Oppressive or unhealthy perks | 9 | Adjusting perks that promote unhealthy playstyles or avoid Diminishing Returns entirely |
| Total | 58 |
The General Perk group is the one most people are underrating. These are the perks every Killer or every Survivor can equip without owning a specific character, and BHVR's intent is to pull Tier I and Tier II values up toward what a fully levelled perk does. If you have ever been handed a Tier I perk in a Bloodweb and felt it did nothing, that is the complaint being addressed.
Why is BHVR rebalancing around Diminishing Returns?
Diminishing Returns shipped in Patch 9.6.0 on April 28, 2026, and it is the reason 58 perks are moving at once. When several identical gameplay modifiers from Powers, Items, Perks and Offerings apply at the same time, they no longer all count for full value. The game sorts them and pays out on a fixed ladder:
| Stacked modifier | Value applied |
|---|---|
| 1st (highest) | 100% |
| 2nd | 50% |
| 3rd | 25% |
| 4th | 12.5% |
| 5th and beyond | 5% |
Add-ons are excluded entirely. Negative action-speed modifiers and positive skill-check-chance modifiers only diminish against other modifiers from the same role, a correction BHVR made after the 9.6.0 PTB.
So stacking four healing-speed perks stopped being four times as good roughly six months ago, but the perks themselves were never re-tuned for it. BHVR was explicit about waiting:
"You may have noticed that this feature did not ship with exponential balance changes to accompany it; we wanted to ease players into the change, monitoring the impact on perk selection first, while we watch to see if any issues arise before making further changes. We feel that now is the time."
— Dead by Daylight Developer Update, September 14, 2026
The goal has two halves: fix perks that dodge Diminishing Returns (which is why 9 perks are called out as oppressive), and buff perks that Diminishing Returns can safely rein in. If a perk is going to be cut to 50% or 25% of its value the moment you stack it, its base number can afford to be higher. Our breakdown of the best generator regression perks in DBD covers the exact stacking numbers this now caps.
Which 10.2.0 perk changes has BHVR confirmed?
Two, in full, with dev commentary. Everything else is coming in the PTB notes.
Do No Harm
Orela Rose's healing perk is being pushed away from flat healing speed and toward a skill-check identity. Live version against what BHVR published:
| Live (Patch 10.1.2) | Announced for 10.2.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Healing speed | +30 / 40 / 50% per Hook Stage, capped at +60 / 80 / 100% | 30 / 40 / 50% faster per Hook State |
| Great Skill Check bonus | +3% progression per Hook Stage, capped at +6% | 3% more progress per Great basic Skill Check |
| Skill Check odds | No effect | +5% chance to trigger a Skill Check |
BHVR's dev note explains the intent plainly: "We wanted Do No Harm to better distinguish itself from We'll Make It and other flat healing speed perks. We added a scaling increase Skill Check odds and made the great skill check bonus scale as well."
One honest caveat: the Developer Update does not restate the current maximum caps of +60 / 80 / 100% healing and +6% progression. Whether those caps survive, move or disappear is not confirmed until the PTB notes land. Do not assume this is an uncapped perk.
Knock Out
The Cannibal's much-maligned perk got a full identity swap in Patch 8.6.0, when BHVR reworked it to address its use as a slugging tool: it stopped hiding dying Survivors' auras and became a pallet-punishing Hindered perk. 10.2.0 sharpens that considerably.
| Live (Patch 10.1.2) | Announced for 10.2.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger distance from pallet | 6 metres | 10 metres |
| Window after the pallet drops | 6 seconds | 6 seconds |
| Hindered strength | 5% | 20% |
| Hindered duration | 3 / 4 / 5 seconds | 3 / 4 / 5 seconds |
| Cancellation | None | Ends early if the pallet is broken |
A 4x increase in Hindered strength is the single largest confirmed number in the whole Developer Update. BHVR's reasoning: "We want Knock Out to really feel impactful for those cases where Survivors refuse to loop around a pallet. We've increased the range to account for some longer loops, as our intent is that this should only impact players who intentionally run away from a pallet."
The wider range matters more than it looks. At 6 metres, a Survivor who dropped a pallet and ran for the next tile was often clear before the perk cared. At 10 metres, that same run sits inside the punish window, while a Survivor who stays and loops the pallet is untouched.
What is the Survivor Intent System in Dead by Daylight?
Separate from the perk pass, 10.2.0 brings the Survivor Intent System to the PTB for the first time. BHVR describes it as a way for Survivors to "send and receive short, pre-defined text messages mid-match to coordinate, from splitting up, to calling an unhook."
The confirmed details:
- It is enabled by default, and can be customised (choosing which messages you use) or turned off entirely in Settings.
- It ships with muting and anti-spam protections.
- Following community feedback, there is a visual signifier showing whether a player has the system disabled, so you can see at a glance who can actually receive your callouts.
- BHVR plans to keep iterating on it, including adding more selectable messages.
This is a solo-queue feature in everything but name. The information gap between a four-player group on voice chat and four strangers is the oldest balance complaint in Dead by Daylight, and pre-set callouts are the most conservative possible attempt at closing it. If it works, it quietly changes the value of every information perk in our best Survivor perks tier list.
Are the Shoulder the Burden and Thrill of the Hunt changes real?
Be careful here. Two specific perk reworks are circulating hard today and neither came from BHVR's English announcement — both are player translations of images posted by the Dead by Daylight Japan account, spread on r/deadbydaylight on September 14. They may well be accurate. They are still not officially confirmed.
For reference, here is what the two perks verifiably do on the live 10.1.2 build:
- Shoulder the Burden (Taurie Cain): once per trial, while not on Death Hook, press the Active Ability button in front of a hooked Survivor to unhook them and trade 1 Hook Stage to their benefit. You scream and suffer Exposed for 60 / 50 / 40 seconds. The traded hook state shows as a yellow pip on the HUD and is visible to the Killer.
- Hex: Thrill of the Hunt (General Killer perk): start with 5 tokens, one per totem. Blessing and Cleansing speeds are reduced by a stackable 8 / 9 / 10% per token, up to 40 / 45 / 50%. You lose a token whenever a totem is cleansed.
The translated versions doing the rounds claim Shoulder the Burden loses Exposed in favour of Injured plus a long Broken duration and deactivates for every Survivor in the lobby once used, and that Thrill of the Hunt becomes a totem-blocking perk scaling with your number of hex totems. Treat both as rumour until the PTB notes publish on September 15.
The community reaction points at a real design tension regardless. As one r/deadbydaylight player put it: "You guys have been working over the years to close the gap between solo queue and SWF, so it's unfortunate that solo queue survivor will be disincentivized from running one of the strongest survivor perks without SWFs being affected at all." If the deactivate-for-everyone clause is real, coordinated groups can agree who brings it. Solo queue cannot.
How to read the 10.2.0 PTB patch notes when they drop
When the notes publish on September 15, check these first:
- Which 9 perks are in the oppressive group. The only bucket that is purely nerfs, and it will shape the meta more than the other 49 changes combined.
- Whether Do No Harm keeps its caps. A scaling perk with no ceiling behaves very differently from one that stops at +100%.
- Which 23 General Perks got Tier I and Tier II buffs. Free to everyone, and disproportionately helpful to low-prestige accounts.
- Anything changing how a perk interacts with Diminishing Returns rather than its raw numbers. Removing a bypass can gut a build without touching a single percentage.
Remember that PTB numbers are drafts. Shoulder the Burden is the standing example: its Exposed duration on the 8.4.0 PTB was 30 / 25 / 20 seconds and shipped live at 60 / 50 / 40 seconds — doubled after testing, logged on the wiki as a nerf. Anything you read tomorrow can move before release.
What does 10.2.0 mean for the current meta?
Nothing, yet. The live build is still Patch 10.1.2, released September 8, 2026, and nothing in the Developer Update changes a match today. 2v8 and the current Killer tier list are unaffected until 10.2.0 ships.
What it does mean is that any perk tier list you read between now and the live release has a known expiry date, because the Diminishing Returns rebalance targets the exact stacking patterns most meta builds are built on. If you were planning to spend Bloodpoints prestiging a character purely for one perk, wait a day and read the full notes first — and our active DBD codes list is the cheapest way to bank Bloodpoints in the meantime.
FAQ
When is the DBD 10.2.0 PTB release date? Tuesday, September 15, 2026. BHVR confirmed it in the 10.2.0 Developer Update published on September 14, and said the full patch notes go out the same day. Public Test Builds historically open on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening Eastern Time and close the following Monday.
How many perks are changing in Dead by Daylight 10.2.0? 58 — 26 perks affected by the Diminishing Returns rebalance, 23 General Perks reworked mainly for newer players, and 9 perks BHVR describes as promoting unhealthy playstyles or avoiding Diminishing Returns.
Can I play the DBD PTB on console, Epic or Game Pass? No. The Public Test Build is exclusive to the Steam version of Dead by Daylight. There is no PTB on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, the Epic Games Store, the Microsoft Store or mobile.
Does PTB progress carry over to the live game? No. The PTB uses its own save file, copied from your live account about a week before it opens, and nothing earned there transfers back. In exchange BHVR pre-loads that save with 12,500 Auric Cells, 1,000,000 Bloodpoints, every Steam-owned character at Prestige 3, and 99 of every item, offering and add-on.
If three Survivors bring Shoulder the Burden and one uses it, is it disabled for the other two? That is what the circulating Japanese translation claims, and it is the question the community is asking loudest. It is not confirmed by BHVR in English, and it is not how the live 10.1.2 version works. Wait for the September 15 PTB notes before rebuilding around it.
When does 10.2.0 actually release on live servers? BHVR has not announced a date. The official wiki documents that the PTB opens three weeks before a scheduled release, and both 2026 cycles matched that exactly, which points to Tuesday, October 6, 2026. It is a pattern-based estimate, not a confirmed release date.
Is the current DBD patch still 10.1.2? Yes. Patch 10.1.2 released on September 8, 2026 and remains the live build. Nothing in the 10.2.0 Developer Update is live yet.
Want more Dead by Daylight guides? These are the pages worth bookmarking before the patch lands.
- All active DBD codes — free Bloodpoints, refreshed as codes expire
- DBD Killer tier list — every Killer ranked on the live build
- Best Survivor perks tier list — the Survivor half, including the renamed perks
- Best generator regression perks — the stacking numbers Diminishing Returns caps
- DBD 2v8 guide — the live mode and its full Killer roster
Sources: Dead by Daylight Developer Update, "10.2.0 Perks Update", published by the official Dead by Daylight developer account on September 14, 2026. Patch 9.6.0 and 10.1.X patch notes, perk change logs and Public Test Build documentation on the Official Dead by Daylight Wiki, read September 14, 2026.
