On this page 9 sections
Dead by Daylight runs Easy Anti-Cheat on PC, and Behaviour bans cheaters permanently. That is the short answer. The longer one is more useful, because “does DBD have anti-cheat” is usually a stand-in for three other questions: what can it see, what does it actually ban for, and is the harmless thing I am doing going to get me flagged.
The Dead by Daylight anti-cheat on PC: Easy Anti-Cheat on Steam, Epic and the Microsoft Store
Every PC version of Dead by Daylight ships with Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), the Epic-owned anti-cheat that also protects games like Apex Legends and Rust. Which storefront you bought it from does not matter. Steam, the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store all start the same EAC service before the game, and without it the game refuses to connect to a match.
EAC installs a kernel-mode driver on Windows. In plain terms, it runs with the same level of access as your graphics driver, so it can see every process and every loaded module on the machine, not just what happens inside the game window. A cheat does not have to touch DBD directly to be noticed. If EAC recognises it sitting in memory, that is enough.
Consoles are different. PlayStation, Xbox and Switch are closed platforms, so there is no EAC driver and no real software cheat scene. What they do have is cross-play, which is why a console survivor can still meet a PC killer running something. Behaviour’s server checks and report system apply to everyone in the match, so console players get banned too, just for exploits and behaviour rather than injected software.
The two layers of detection, in plain terms
Two separate systems can end your account, and people usually get caught by the one they were not thinking about.
Layer one: the client-side anti-cheat looks at your machine
This is EAC. It runs on your PC and asks one question: is something here that should not be? It checks the game’s files for tampering, watches for code being injected into the process, looks for known cheat signatures in memory, and flags debuggers and hooking tools attached to the game. It also phones home, so a signature added to EAC’s list today applies to you the next time you launch.
What it does not do is understand Dead by Daylight. EAC has no idea what a generator is. It cannot tell you are seeing the killer’s outline through a wall. It only knows what software is running and whether it matches something it has seen before.
Layer two: the server and the report queue look at what your character did
Since Dead by Daylight moved to dedicated servers, the server has been the authority on where everyone is and what they are doing. It knows survivors run at a fixed speed. It knows a generator cannot go from empty to lit in four seconds with one person on it. It knows a killer cannot be at the shack one moment and at the far gate the next. When the numbers from your client are impossible, the server does not need EAC. It logs them against the account.
On top of that sits human review. In-game reports flag the match, and Behaviour asks for a support ticket with video evidence. A clip of a survivor sprinting at double speed gets looked at. A salty “he must be hacking” with nothing behind it mostly gets buried under the volume.
Our support page on how cheat detection works covers the technical side of layer one. The thing to take from this section is that a perfectly undetected client can still get you banned if the account does things a server can see.
What a Dead by Daylight ban looks like
A DBD cheating ban is an account ban. It attaches to the account you play on, which on PC means the Steam, Epic or Microsoft account tied to your Behaviour account.
Behaviour’s stated position is that bans for cheating are permanent. There is no strike system, and cheating bans are not lifted on appeal unless support concludes the ban was a mistake, which almost never happens for someone who was actually running software. Their reasoning is simple: a temporary ban for cheating is a cooldown, and a cooldown is not a deterrent. We cover what an appeal can and cannot do on our page on how bans work.
An EAC ban is issued per game by that game’s developer. A DBD ban does not carry into Apex or Rust, and a ban there does not carry into DBD. It is not a VAC ban either; VAC is Valve’s own system and has nothing to do with EAC.
What a ban wave is
A ban wave is when a batch of accounts flagged over days or weeks all get banned at once. Behaviour and EAC do this on purpose. If every detection triggered an instant ban, a cheat developer could push a new build, watch who got hit within the hour, and work out exactly what tripped it. Delaying the bans and applying them together removes that feedback loop. It also means “I have used it for two weeks and I am fine” tells you very little. A flag on day one can turn into a ban on day nineteen.
Hardware bans
HWID bans come up a lot. Behaviour has not published anything about hardware bans, and nearly every ban we hear about is a plain account ban. That said, EAC as a platform can fingerprint hardware, and creating a fresh account on the same machine minutes after a ban is exactly the pattern that invites a closer look. For what a hardware ban actually is, read our explainer on HWID bans.
What actually gets people banned in DBD, ranked honestly
Most cheat sites skip this section. Here is the honest order, most bans first.
| Rank | What got them banned | Why it works against you | How fast |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A free public cheat that EAC already knows | The signature is on the list; thousands run the same file | Instant kick, or the next wave |
| 2 | Blatant server-visible behaviour (speed, instant gens, teleporting) | The server sees impossible numbers; no software detection needed | Next wave, often within days |
| 3 | Reports with video evidence from spectating survivors | A human reviews a clip that shows the cheat working | Days to weeks |
| 4 | A private build getting detected | A signature or hooking pattern gets added to EAC’s list | Rare, and it shows up as a wave |
Rank one is miles ahead of the rest. Free cheats from forums and YouTube are detected fast because everyone running one is running the same file. EAC only has to catch one copy. Many also come with something extra in the installer, so the ban is often the least of that person’s problems.
Rank two catches people who paid for a private build and assumed that meant they were safe. Speed, instant generator repairs and teleports are all things the server measures directly. It does not matter how well the client hides. The account did something impossible and the server wrote it down.
Rank three is slower but very real, and it is why survivors are more exposed than killers. A survivor who dies or escapes can spectate their remaining teammates, so a cheating survivor can have three people watching with a clip recorder ready. A cheating killer is seen by four survivors at once, all of whom can report and send footage. Our guide on how to spot a cheater in Dead by Daylight is written from their side of the screen.
Rank four is the genuine “the cheat got detected” case. It happens, and any private cheat that says otherwise is lying. But it is the smallest share of bans, and it tends to hit as a wave that a status page catches before most users do.
Things that do not get you banned in DBD
Plenty of people search “dead by daylight ban” because they are worried about something ordinary. None of the below is something Behaviour or EAC bans for on its own.
| What people worry about | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Discord, Steam, Nvidia or AMD overlays | Not a ban trigger | Overlays draw on top of the screen and never touch game memory |
| MSI Afterburner or RivaTuner FPS counters | Not a ban trigger, sometimes blocked | EAC may refuse to launch with some hooking tools; a refusal is not a ban |
| A wired controller or Steam Input remapping | Not a ban trigger | The game supports controllers natively; input is just input |
| The in-game FOV slider at maximum | Not a ban trigger | It is a built-in setting for first-person killers |
| Region switching with a VPN | Not a ban trigger, bad for your hits | Not a cheat; you just play with worse ping |
| Disconnecting or rage quitting | Matchmaking lockout only | A temporary timer that grows with repeats, not an account ban |
| Being in a match with a cheater | Not a ban trigger | Being on the receiving end is not an offence |
| An EAC ban in a different game | Not carried over | EAC bans are issued per title |
Two caveats. High FOV is only safe through the slider. Forcing stretched resolution through third-party tools is different: Behaviour treats it as an unfair advantage and has taken in-game steps against it, so treat it like any other cheat feature. Our post on FOV and stretched resolution in Dead by Daylight covers where the line sits. And region switching will not ban you, but it will make your hits feel wrong; our Dead by Daylight servers and regions guide explains why the closest server almost always wins.
How private cheats try to stay undetected
Now the other side of the arms race, in plain language and without the usual promises.
Polymorphic builds. EAC’s fastest weapon is a signature: a fingerprint of a known cheat’s code. A polymorphic build reshapes itself so the file on your machine does not match the file on anyone else’s, and a signature written for one copy does not catch the rest. It raises the cost of detection from “catch one user” to “understand the whole technique”.
Updating on patch day. Every DBD patch shifts the game’s internal layout. A cheat reading the old layout will crash, misbehave, or worse, do something the server notices. Serious teams take the loader down the moment a patch drops and bring it back once the new build is verified. The downtime is annoying. It is also the clearest sign a provider is paying attention.
Live status. A status page that says undetected, updating or detected, kept current by the people who maintain the build, is worth more than any marketing copy. It should change. One that has read “undetected” for two years without ever flipping is not being maintained.
Pausing sales when something looks off. When a wave hits, or reports spike in a way that does not fit the normal pattern, the honest move is to stop selling until the cause is known. Selling into a wave turns one bad week into a hundred refund tickets.
That is how the Elocarry Dead by Daylight cheat is run: an internal build, updated per patch, with a public status page and sales paused whenever the status is not green. And the caveat we put on every page: no cheat is ever guaranteed undetected. Not ours, not anyone’s. EAC gets better, Behaviour adds server checks, and every provider that has ever existed has had a detection at some point. What separates good providers from bad is how quickly they notice, how honestly they say so, and whether they were still selling while it happened.
Hardware cheats do not get around any of this, and they cost a lot more to find out. We wrote up why you do not need DMA for Dead by Daylight if you want the long version.
How to check your status, and what to do if you are banned
First work out which of two things happened, because they look similar and mean very different things.
A detection is a kick. EAC throws an error mid-match or refuses to start the game, usually with a message about an untrusted file or a security violation. Your account still logs in. A ban is the account being refused at login, every time, with a message that says so. Our walkthrough on whether you were detected or banned lists the messages and what each one means.
If it is a detection, stop launching the game. Repeatedly starting a flagged client is the fastest way to turn a kick into a ban. Check the provider’s status page, and if it says nothing, assume the worst until it does.
If it is a ban, here is the order of operations from our page on what to do after a ban:
- Confirm it is a ban and not a platform issue: log in through the storefront and check other games work.
- Do not create a fresh account on the same machine within the hour. Read the hardware section above first.
- Only write to Behaviour support if you genuinely did not cheat. Cheating bans are permanent, and a ticket claiming innocence while the account was running speed will not go anywhere.
- Work out which of the four causes above applied. If you were running speed or instant gens, no client update would have saved you.
Playing with legit-looking settings
Detection is only one of the four causes. The other three are about what other players see, and that part is in your hands.
Smoothing and delays. An aimbot that snaps is a report waiting to happen. Smoothing makes the correction gradual, and a short delay before it engages means a Huntress hatchet does not look like a magnet. Humanisation settings exist for the same reason: they add the small inconsistencies a real player has.
Subtle ESP. Full skeletons, snap lines and filled boxes look great in a screenshot and terrible on a spectator’s screen when your camera keeps landing on a survivor through three walls. Use our Dead by Daylight ESP with a distance limit, a small box or a name tag and the occluded check on, then play the information rather than staring at it. A killer who happens to check the right locker every time is suspicious. One who checks it after following scratch marks is just good.
No speed. This is the big one. Speed is the most visible thing a cheat can do. Every survivor notices within seconds, and the server measures movement directly, so it triggers rank two and rank three at once. That is why the Elocarry speed option is marked high risk and ships turned off. The speed hack page says the same in larger letters. Turn it on and you are choosing the ban risk, knowing that no update on our side changes what the server sees.
Streaming and clips. If you stream or record, use streamproof mode so the overlay does not end up in your own VOD. Plenty of bans have started with someone’s own clip.
If nobody in the match can tell you are cheating, the only layer left that can catch you is the client-side one, and that is the layer a provider can actually do something about. Play like a good player who happens to know a bit more and you have removed three of the four ways this ends badly. The fourth is never zero, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Frequently asked questions
Does Dead by Daylight use Easy Anti-Cheat?
Yes. Every PC version of Dead by Daylight, on Steam, the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store, launches Easy Anti-Cheat before the game and will not connect to a match without it. Console versions do not run EAC because they are closed platforms, but they share the same servers and report system through cross-play.
Does DBD actually ban cheaters or just kick them?
Both, and they are different events. A kick is Easy Anti-Cheat refusing to run a client it does not trust, and you can usually still log in afterwards. A ban is Behaviour closing the account for cheating, which stops it logging in at all. Kicks often turn into bans in a later wave, so a kick is a warning to stop rather than a free pass.
Are Dead by Daylight cheating bans permanent?
Behaviour's stated policy is that bans for cheating are permanent and are not lifted on appeal unless the ban itself was a mistake. There is no strike system and no timed ban for cheating. Temporary lockouts do exist, but only for disconnecting from matches, and those are matchmaking penalties rather than account bans.
What is a DBD ban wave?
A ban wave is when accounts flagged over a period of days or weeks are all banned at once instead of one at a time. It stops cheat developers from working out which build or which feature triggered the detection, because they cannot match a ban to a specific moment. It also means playing for a week without a ban does not tell you the account is clean.
Can you get banned in DBD for using the Discord overlay or a controller?
No. Overlays from Discord, Steam, Nvidia and AMD draw on top of the screen without touching game memory and Easy Anti-Cheat allows them. Controllers, including wired ones and Steam Input remaps, are supported by the game natively. Some FPS counters and hooking tools can be blocked at launch, but being blocked from launching is not a ban.
Does Dead by Daylight hardware ban?
Behaviour has not published anything about hardware bans and almost every DBD ban reported is a normal account ban. Easy Anti-Cheat as a platform can fingerprint hardware, so making a brand new account on the same PC straight after a ban is the pattern most likely to draw attention. Treat a hardware ban as possible rather than standard.
Do reports actually get people banned in Dead by Daylight?
Reports with video evidence do. Behaviour asks for an in-game report followed by a support ticket with a clip, and a clear clip of speed hacking or instant generators gets reviewed. A report with no evidence mostly disappears into the queue. Survivors who die or escape can spectate their teammates, so a cheating survivor is usually being watched by people who can record.
Can console players be banned for cheating in DBD?
Yes. Consoles have no Easy Anti-Cheat driver, but the dedicated servers and the report system apply to every platform in a cross-play match. Console bans tend to come from exploits, glitches and behaviour reports rather than injected software, because closed platforms make software cheats rare.
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