Over the weekend, Dead By Daylight developers Behavior Interactive found themselves embroiled in a feud after a member of their team provided controversial Vtuber TheBurntPeanut with a large amount of paid content from the game for free during his live stream. Behavior 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 atrocities, this caused people of all possible positions to become angry at the studio. Now, Behavior is attempting another round of damage control, 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 loopholes left in the previous attempt, which has allowed the situation to spiral out of control over the past 24 hours. However, given that throwing his own team member under the bus didn’t sit well with many, while condemning TheBurntPeanut without citing cause infuriated his huge following, it’s unlikely to calm anyone who took up either issue. To our community: We wanted to follow up on yesterday’s message to better address the questions you are really asking that are most important to you. pic.twitter.com/OPqAJ9xIoh — Dead by Daylight (@DeadbyDaylight) November 3, 2026 It’s a complicated situation, because while TheBurntPeanut is certainly someone who generates controversy and suggests hostility, he also tends to be deliberately (perhaps trollingly) ambiguous in his speech. The prime example of his problematic nature is an occasion where Peanut loudly declared that he was going to “use a slur” and then performatively beeped instead of saying something offensive. This left what was not said to the viewer’s imagination, and the results were a disaster. Clearly designed to provoke, Edgelord style, it means that Peanut, while one of the most popular streamers on the Internet, is not liked by large sectors. Given that Dead by Daylight has, over the past 10 years, earned a reputation as an online space for marginalized gamers, especially popular among LGBTQ gamers, TheBurntPeanut’s apparent endorsement became an extremely incendiary moment. This is something Behavior is now trying to break down in excruciating detail, after Dead by Daylight was bombarded with negative reviews on Steam from every side imaginable. “When we collaborate with a new creator,” says Behavior, “we typically take a hard look at their past content to determine if it represents the values of inclusivity our community expects of us. In this case, this was not properly considered or discussed as a group.” Or, in other words, a team member noticed that the game was getting a big Halloween boost from a big streamer playing it, and excitedly threw the game’s unlocks at them to boost it. This could have happened, Behavior says, because “we did not have strong enough processes and internal guardrails to prevent directly awarding game items to players without greater consensus and approval. Our team members acted without a support system behind them to guide them toward another outcome.” During the stream, Peanut suggested that getting the free content would surely cause problems, and the anonymous team member responded via the official Behavior Interactive account: “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!” The new statement reads: “This message, along with a few others in that session, showed a disregard for the context we suddenly found ourselves in and crossed the line of appropriate responses for our brand. That response escalated the situation for us and for our community, especially our content creators on the front lines of these conversations, and that is unacceptable.” The statement then moves on to exactly what values Behavior Interactive has. 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 is a welcome inclusion. “We are talking about respect, transparency, diversity and creating a space where people of different origins and experiences feel welcome,” explains the company. “Diversity is one of the core principles of DbD and everyone is welcome to play it. But when we choose to work with a creator, we put our name next to theirs and want to partner with creators whose words and actions share and support that principle.” Action Stations “What are you really going to do about it?” was one of the strongest responses of the last day, and Behavior below addresses this. “Each of the problems listed above present addressable solutions that we are already making progress on,” the study says. This includes removing content gifted to Peanut (already done), rewriting the company’s guidelines on interacting with creators and which team members can do so, and changing its own internal processes for awarding content and in-game currency to players. There’s also a push to address “communication standards” with your staff, and the game’s Creator Program will remove creators who have “violated” the rules. As for what actions will be taken against the team member who interacted with TheBurntPeanut, Behavior Interactive maintains that this is a confidential internal matter. “We take this situation very seriously,” the statement said, “and are taking appropriate measures internally.” The long, very long post ends: This incident has broken trust in our community, which has expectations and respect for the types of people we associate with, but more importantly, expectations about 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 completely condemn TheBurntPeanut is a behavior he abides by, and while that will likely encourage his toxic audience to hold grudges, it also demonstrates a firm adherence on the part of the audience that DbD has clearly worked hard to cultivate. As for its own team member, the statement still goes out of its way to try to distance the studio as a whole from the actions of an individual acting out of turn over the weekend. While it is acknowledged that the training and processes were not in place to prevent this mistake from being made, there is still a lot of “but it was them, not the rest of us” that follows. It will be interesting to see how that happens. On the other hand, the rest of the crowd asking for a head will also be upset if it is maintained that this is a confidential situation.
