Are Icon Packs Safe to Use?

We've all wondered it at some point - are custom icons safe to use? Will I get banned for using them? Does EAC (Easy Anti-Cheat) care?

The quick answer is they should be safe. I'm not aware of any issues, and thousands of people use NightLight Desktop each day and have used it to install packs over three million times.

The installation of icon packs is simply a matter of placing image files in a specific folder. Dead by Daylight then chooses to read them and use them over the bundled icons. It seems unlikely it would function this way if the devs had an issue with it (especially as it was broken and then returned to working like this a long time ago).

Unsurprisingly, Behaviour can't/won't officially condone custom icons, here's a comment from a member of their team on the official forums (the essence of which has since been repeated by them several times):

We do not actively hunt you down and ban you for doing so. However, since you are altering files, you're running the risk of triggering the anti-cheat. If that happens, it will ban you and there's nothing we can do to help. If you decide to do it, you're doing it at your own risk, but I wouldn't recommend it.

And a comment from a moderator on the Steam forum:

Modifying any game files is done at your own risk.

We are not manually banning players for modifying .png files in their game folders, however, the anti-cheat may detect this and ban you.

If this occurs we will not be able to assist you.

These comments do pre-date an update which meant the icons are no longer saved as individual PNG files, so we're not even really modifying anything; just adding files to a few folders.

To summarise, it's not officially endorsed, but neither is it prohibited, and there have been no known problems with it. If you have any questions, feel free to stop by the Discord!