A Behaviour staffer unlocked every Dead by Daylight DLC for the controversial streamer live on stream and said "WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!" Two apologies later, the content is gone and both sides are review-bombing the game.
Over Halloween weekend, a Behaviour staffer unlocked all paid Dead by Daylight content and currency for TheBurntPeanut on his first DbD stream.
When concerns came up, the official account replied "WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT! THEY ARE YOURS TO KEEP." Critics point to the streamer's past clips allegedly using slurs.
Behaviour's first apology, posted on the small DbD Pulse account, was slammed as empty.
A second statement says the content has been removed, creator vetting is being rewritten, and "appropriate action" is being taken internally.
Players angry about the gift and fans angry about the apology are both review-bombing the game on Steam.
Dead by Daylight just had the weirdest week in its ten-year history, and the killer wasn’t the Trapper. Over Halloween weekend, a Behaviour Interactive staffer unlocked every paid killer, survivor and a pile of currency for TheBurntPeanut, the peanut-avatar streamer, live on his first ever Dead by Daylight stream. Then they told the chat “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!”
They could not, in fact, take the heat. Three days later Behaviour has apologised twice, taken all the content back, promised “appropriate action” against the staffer, and somehow managed to get review-bombed by both sides at once. Here’s how a free DLC gift turned into a full-blown culture war.
If you’re not deep in Twitch, TheBurntPeanut is a streamer who appears on camera as a noseless face on a cartoon peanut body. He’s become one of the platform’s biggest names, best known for Arc Raiders and an energetic, very edgy style of humour. He’s got around 258,000 followers on X alone.
He’s also got baggage. In June, Fortnite fans spotted him in Chapter 7 Season 3 promo art, and an old clip resurfaced that allegedly shows him using a homophobic slur while playing Escape from Tarkov. Epic went ahead anyway and added him as a rare in-game Sprite. Kotaku says he has a reputation for toxicity built on viral clips where he appears to use, or joke about using, bleeped-out slurs. Insider Gaming describes it as one slur, “many months ago”, that he apologised for straight away. On stream this week, he said he couldn’t recall ever saying anything about transgender people in two years of streaming.
On 31 October, he announced a spooky Dead by Daylight stream with fellow streamers cloakzy, CoconutB and others:
According to Behaviour’s own account, team members saw “a very large audience appear in the DbD Twitch directory watching a streamer who has not played DbD before” and jumped on it. Someone unlocked the lot for him: every paid character and perk, plus in-game currency. For a regular player buying it all, that’s hundreds of dollars of DLC.
Peanut, clearly aware of how it would look, joked about “streamer privileges” and offered to hand it back. Behaviour says he did that while “using pejorative words for people on Twitter”. The reply from Dead by Daylight’s official Twitch account, typed by the staffer: “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT! THEY ARE YOURS TO KEEP.” When viewers raised concerns in chat, they were brushed off.
On 1 November, Behaviour posted a statement on DbD Pulse, its community news account. It said unlocking content so new creators can get “a sneak peek” isn’t unusual, but this time it was done “without receiving appropriate approvals”, and that the staffer’s “subsequent comments and conduct do not align with Dead by Daylight’s core values.” It admitted “we should have responded by looking into these concerns, not dismissing them,” and condemned threats against its employees.
Nobody was happy. DbD Pulse has about 22,000 followers against the main account’s 1.3 million, so critics said Behaviour was burying it. It didn’t say whether Peanut would keep the content, or whether anything would happen to the staffer. One viral reply summed up the mood: “an apology with zero consequences to the employee who caused the whole thing is an empty meaningless apology.”
This is where it got properly weird. Players who were angry about the gift kept piling on, and so did a whole new crowd angry that Behaviour had apologised at all. Peanut’s fans, and the anti-woke corner of gaming Twitter, saw a studio caving to a vocal minority. According to Kotaku, some longtime DbD players say Peanut’s fans swarmed the game’s Discord, which had to switch on slow mode, while his fans say they’re the ones being harassed.
Peanut addressed it on stream, saying he’d seen the anger and at least one refund request:
The result is a review-bombing pincer movement on Steam. One side is leaving negative reviews over the gift and the harassment, the other over the apology. As one DbD creator put it, “both parties are negatively reviewing the game.” Kotaku also reported that at least one apparent member of DbD’s creator program called being LGBTQ a “mental illness” before deleting their account.
On 2 November, US time, Behaviour tried again, this time on the main Dead by Daylight account, with a four-page statement that’s racked up over 5 million views. It’s a lot more direct.
The follow-up only poured more fuel on it. Asmongold called it a “pathetic capitulation that will earn the respect of no one”, according to Sportskeeda, and his reply under the statement went straight after trans people. Dr Disrespect also went off on Behaviour for apologising, though plenty of replies pointed out the irony of Doc lecturing anyone about controversy.
Peanut, for his part, seems to be having a great time. His stream title the day the content got pulled: “#1 DBD STREAMER PLAYS DEADLOCK”.
Strip out the culture war for a sec and the core of this is simple: a staffer made a big call on the fly, through the brand’s official account, with no sign-off, and then mocked the people raising concerns. “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!” is the kind of thing that sounds great at 11pm in a Twitch chat and terrible in a statement three days later. Behaviour admits all of that. That’s a process failure, and it’s on the studio more than any one employee.
But Behaviour then fumbled it twice. The first apology was buried on a side account and said nothing. The second fixed that, but snatching back a gift live on the internet has made the studio look flaky to everyone and turned Peanut into a martyr for exactly the crowd that already thinks it’s too woke. Behaviour was always going to upset someone here. The mistake was not working out which side it was on before it hit “unlock all”. Dead by Daylight has spent years selling itself as an inclusive game. If that’s the brand, vet your partners before you give them the keys, not after.
And to the people sending threats to Behaviour staff, or harassing anyone on either side: get a grip. It’s a game about running away from a bloke with a hook. Where do you land on this one? Have your say in the comments, or come argue about it in the GetRekt Discord.
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