Dead By Daylight Developers Launch A Second Lengthy Attempt At Damage Control Following TheBurntPeanut Controversy

Over the weekend, Dead By Daylight developers Behaviour Interactive found themselves embroiled in a fracas after a member of its team provided controversial Vtuber TheBurntPeanut with a whole bunch of in-game paid content for free during his livestream. Behaviour then issued a public apology for the situation, seemingly condemning its own employee and Peanut at the same time, and thanks to the perceived ambiguity in Peanut’s alleged enormities, this caused people from every possible position to become pissed off with the studio. Now, Behaviour is trying another round of damage control, while maintaining its previous position that TheBurntPeanut should never have been endorsed. This new four-page statement is clearly intended to try to plug the many gaps left in the previous attempt, which has allowed the situation to spiral out of control over the last 24 hours. However, given throwing its own team member under the bus sat poorly with many, while condemning TheBurntPeanut without citing cause infuriated his enormous following, it’s unlikely to assuage anyone who took either issue. To our community: We wanted to follow up on yesterday’s message to better address the questions you are actually asking and that matter most to you. pic.twitter.com/OPqAJ9xIoh — Dead by Daylight (@DeadbyDaylight) November 3, 2026 It’s a complicated situation, because while TheBurntPeanut is unquestionably someone who courts controversy and suggests hostility, he’s also often deliberately (perhaps trollingly) ambiguous in his delivery. The primary example of his problematic nature is an occasion in which Peanut loudly declared he was going to “user a slur,” and then performatively played bleeping sounds instead of actually saying anything offensive. This left what he wasn’t saying to the imagination of the viewer, and the results were a mess. Clearly designed to provoke, edgelord-style, it means Peanut—while one of the most popular streamers on the internet—is widely disliked in large sectors. Given Dead by Daylight has, over the last 10 years, gained a reputation for being an online space for marginalized players, especially popular among LGBTQ gamers, the apparent endorsement of TheBurntPeanut became an extremely incendiary moment. This is something Behaviour is now trying to break down in excruciating detail, in the wake of Dead by Daylight getting bombarded by negative reviews on Steam coming from every imaginable side. Taking the heat “When collaborating with a new creator,” says Behaviour, “we normally look thoroughly at their past content to determine whether they are representing the values of inclusion our community expects from us. In this case, this was not taken into proper consideration or discussed as a group.” Or, in other words, a member of the team noticed the game was getting a huge Halloween bump from a big streamer playing, and excitedly threw the game unlocks toward them to boost this. This was able to occur, says Behaviour, because “we did not have stringent enough processes and guardrails internally to prevent from directly granting in-game items to players without larger consensus and approval. Our team member acted without a supporting system behind them to guide them to another outcome.” During the stream, Peanut suggested that getting the free content was bound to cause issues, and the unnamed team member responded via Behaviour Interactive’s official account, “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!” The new statement says, “This message, along with some others in that session, showed a disregard for the context we were suddenly in and crossed the line of appropriate responses from our brand. That reply escalated the situation for us and for our community, especially our content creators on the frontlines of these conversations, and that’s unacceptable.” The statement next moves on to exactly what values Behaviour Interactive holds. Given the ubiquity of the use of phrases like “does not align with our values” in generic apologies, almost always used without defining what those values might be, this a welcome inclusion. “We mean respect, transparency, diversity, and creating a space where people from different backgrounds and experiences feel welcome,” the company explains. “Diversity is one of DbD‘s core principles and everyone is welcome to play it. But when we chose to work with a creator, we’re putting our name next to theirs, and we want to partner with creators whose words and actions share and support that principle.” Action stations “What are you going to actually do about it?” was one of the most resounding responses over the last day, and Behaviour next address this. “Each one of the problems listed above present addressable solutions we are already moving forward with,” the studio says. This includes removing the content gifted to Peanut (already done), rewriting the company’s guidelines on interacting with creators and which team members are permitted to do so, and changing its own internal processes for granting in-game content and currency to players. There’s also a push to address “communication standards” with its staff, and the game’s Creator Program will remove creators who “are found to have violated” the rules. As for what actions will be taken against the team member who interacted with TheBurntPeanut, Behaviour Interactive is maintaining that this is a confidential, internal matter. “We take this situation very seriously,” the statement reads, “and are taking appropriate action internally.” The long, long post then ends, This incident has broken trust with our community who hold expectations and regards for the types of people we partner with, but more importantly expectations of the conduct and actions taken by our team in our daily work within this community. We understand it will be a slow road to regain that trust but we are committed to doing the work necessary to get there. Clearly the decision to utterly condemn TheBurntPeanut is one Behaviour is sticking by, and while that will likely encourage his toxic audience to maintain a grudge, it also demonstrates a firm sticking by the audience DbD has clearly striven to cultivate. As for its own team member, the statement still does go to quite some lengths to try to distance the wider studio from the actions of an individual acting out of turn over the weekend. While acknowledging that the training and processes weren’t in place to prevent this mistake from being made, there’s still an awful lot of “but it was them, not the rest of us” that follows. It will be interesting to see how that goes down. Then again, the other crowd baying for a head will also be displeased by the maintaining that this is a confidential situation.