Behaviour Interactive has published a second, substantially more detailed response to the controversy surrounding Dead by Daylight, streamer TheBurntPeanut, and an employee’s decision to grant the creator paid in-game content during a livestream.
The studio’s newer statement maintains its central position: it does not regard the interaction as an appropriate endorsement of the creator, and it says the incident exposed shortcomings in its own approval processes. It also lays out several promised changes, including revised standards for staff contact with creators, tighter controls over granting virtual items or currency, and enforcement measures within the game’s Creator Program.
The response comes after a weekend dispute that prompted negative Steam reviews and strong reactions from several directions. Some players objected to the apparent association with TheBurntPeanut; others were unhappy with how the studio’s first response characterized the employee’s conduct and the creator. The follow-up attempts to address both the operational failure and the studio’s broader reasoning, though it leaves personnel outcomes confidential.
What started the dispute
During a livestream, a Behaviour Interactive team member gave TheBurntPeanut a collection of paid Dead by Daylight content for free. In practical terms, that kind of action can look like a promotional partnership even if it was not processed as a formal sponsorship: a recognizable creator receives commercially sold game content, a company representative is visibly involved, and the exchange occurs in front of the creator’s audience.
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That distinction sits at the heart of Behaviour’s explanation. The studio says a new creator would normally be assessed against the inclusion values it expects its community-facing partners to represent. In this case, it says that assessment did not receive sufficient consideration or group discussion.
The situation became more volatile after a reply from Behaviour Interactive’s official account. When TheBurntPeanut suggested the free content could create trouble, the account responded, “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!” The studio now says that message and other replies in the session were inappropriate for its brand, failed to account for the context, and escalated pressure on community members and creators discussing the event.
Behaviour’s account of the incident does not frame it solely as one person making an unauthorized choice. It says internal safeguards were not strong enough to prevent an employee from directly granting in-game content without a wider consensus or approval process. That is an important admission because it shifts part of the question from individual judgment to the systems that determine who can approve, issue, and publicly discuss valuable digital goods.
Why the creator association became so sensitive
TheBurntPeanut is a prominent Vtuber whose style has attracted controversy. The concern described around this case involves provocative, deliberately ambiguous material, including an incident in which he said he would use a slur but then used bleeping sounds rather than audibly saying one. The ambiguity did not prevent the moment from being inflammatory; it instead left audiences to infer what was being invoked.
That context matters because Dead by Daylight has built a sizable community that includes marginalized players and has a particular following among LGBTQ players. For people who expect a game’s official channels to help sustain a welcoming environment, an apparently friendly, public interaction with a divisive creator can carry more meaning than a routine customer-service exchange.
Behaviour’s latest statement is clearer than a generic assertion that something “does not align with our values.” The company identifies those values as respect, transparency, diversity, and creating a space where people with differing experiences and backgrounds feel welcome. It says everyone is welcome to play Dead by Daylight, while drawing a separate line around whom the company chooses to work with as a creator partner.
That is a consequential distinction. A public multiplayer game cannot and should not require players to share a developer’s worldview as a condition of access. A creator collaboration, however, is an affirmative business or community decision. When an official account provides valuable content, joins a broadcast conversation, or otherwise boosts a creator’s visibility, audiences may reasonably read it as the developer putting its name alongside that creator’s reputation.
What Behaviour says it is changing
The studio says the gifted content has already been removed. It has also committed to a set of policy and process changes intended to prevent a repeat of the circumstances that led to the exchange.
- Creator-interaction guidelines: Behaviour says it will rewrite its rules governing how staff interact with creators and clarify which employees are permitted to do so.
- Controls on virtual goods: The studio says its internal process for giving players in-game content and currency will change. These controls are intended to ensure larger consensus and approval before items are granted.
- Staff communication standards: Behaviour says it will address the standards expected of employees communicating on behalf of the company.
- Creator Program enforcement: The company says creators found to have violated the program’s rules will be removed.
These are not all the same kind of safeguard. A policy defining who may speak for a brand deals with public messaging. An approval mechanism for paid content deals with access and authorization. A Creator Program rule deals with longer-term partnership eligibility. Treating them separately is useful because the controversy involved all three at once: a public reply, a transfer of paid items, and the perceived endorsement of a creator.
The difficult part will be implementation. A policy can state that approval is needed; an effective process must also make that approval visible, consistent, and practical for staff during fast-moving livestreams and social-media conversations. Likewise, a creator standard is only as meaningful as the criteria and enforcement behind it. Behaviour has said it is moving forward with those solutions, but its statement does not publicly provide the rewritten rules, an approval hierarchy, or a timeline for their completion.
That does not mean the measures are meaningless. It means players assessing the response will have to judge it through later conduct: whether similar item grants occur, whether official social replies show a more careful tone, and whether the studio applies its partnership rules consistently when future creators draw concern.
A personnel question Behaviour will not answer publicly
One part of the story remains deliberately unresolved. Behaviour says it is taking appropriate internal action regarding the team member involved, but it will not disclose the action because it is confidential.
This position is likely to frustrate people seeking a visible consequence, yet it is also a standard boundary for an employer discussing an individual employee. The more substantive public issue is not the specific employment outcome but whether the studio genuinely accepts its own responsibility for the environment in which the employee acted. On that point, the statement offers two messages that must coexist: the employee’s messages crossed the company’s standards, and the company lacked sufficient guardrails to direct the interaction elsewhere.
Neither point cancels the other. Individual staff members can make poor choices, and organizations can fail to establish clear limits, training, permissions, or escalation paths. The credibility challenge for Behaviour is avoiding the impression that it is treating the person involved as the entire explanation while presenting its process reforms as an afterthought.
What the statement does—and does not—settle
The new response is more concrete than a brief apology because it names the failures Behaviour believes occurred: inadequate creator vetting, loose controls over granting paid content, and communication from an official account that did not meet the moment. It also explains why the company views creator association as distinct from merely allowing anyone to play the game.
At the same time, it is unlikely to produce universal agreement. TheBurntPeanut’s supporters may see the studio’s stance as an unjustified rejection of a creator whose provocative presentation is often ambiguous. Players who felt hurt or alarmed by the apparent endorsement may want more detail about how revised rules will work. Others may remain focused on the treatment of the employee and the balance between individual accountability and institutional responsibility.
Steam’s negative-review response illustrates how quickly such disputes spread beyond the original livestream. A review campaign can turn a disagreement about social-media conduct into a highly visible signal on a game’s store page, where prospective players may encounter it without knowing the full context. It also means the practical consequences are not limited to one creator relationship; the studio must manage community trust in public, across platforms, while avoiding further inflammatory messaging.
Behaviour closes by acknowledging that trust has been damaged and that restoring it will take time. That is an appropriately limited promise. Trust is not restored by the length of a statement or by a single batch of new rules. It depends on whether the company’s stated commitments to inclusion, transparent standards, and careful official conduct remain visible when the next difficult creator or community decision arrives.
For a further account of the announced safeguards, see this report on the updated Dead by Daylight response.
