David is an Englishman from Manchester who displayed anti-social behaviour before being taken to the Entity's realm, where he now possesses abilities which make him notably skilled at protecting other Survivors and bolstering their chances of survival against Killers, rewarding the player for choosing an altruistic style of play.

David was first revealed as a new Survivor on 25 July 2017, to be added into the game as part of the free DLC A Lullaby for the Dark, which also included the Huntress as a new Killer and Mother's Dwelling as a new map.

[3] Born and raised in Manchester, David is described as the spoiled only child of wealthy parents who spent his time indulging in delinquent behaviour such as drinking and fighting in pubs.

[4] As with other Survivors, David does not speak but can grunt and scream in pain; in these instances, he is voiced by Slovak game designer Stefan Horvath, who worked on Dead by Daylight.

[11] On 27 April 2022, David's sexual orientation was confirmed through the announcement of an impending story update titled Devotion, which explains that his delinquent behaviour originated from his internal struggle to come to terms with being gay.

His abilities make him tougher than most other Survivors, which enables players to run interference to distract Killers while their teammates who control less durable characters can concentrate on repairing generators.

[17] Maria Meluso of Screen Rant also highlighted We're Gonna Live Forever as one of the two most important in the game for players that want to maximine the amount of Bloodpoints they receive.

[7][6] According to statistics gathered by Behaviour Interactive from July 2017 to May 2021, Dead Hard is the third most commonly used Survivor perk, after Claudette Morel's Self Care and Bill Overbeck's Borrowed Time.

Wilde claimed that a number of "negative or confused reactions" came from individuals who were unaware that the announcement coincided with a new story expansion for the character and assumed that the developers consulted with GaymerX just to write a blog post which states his sexual identity.

Lastly, Wilde characterised the remainder of the negative backlash to be homophobia from "people and pundits who reject not just the idea of representation, but the identities being represented themselves, and took the announcement as a cue for outraged soapboxing".