Behaviour Interactive has apologized to the Dead by Daylight community after a team member gave streamer TheBurntPeanut access to the game’s full roster of Survivors and Killers, a decision the studio now says was made without appropriate approvals.

The fallout started over Halloween weekend. TheBurntPeanut, who has built a following over the past year by playing extraction shooters like Arc Raiders, was trying Dead by Daylight for the first time. During his Halloween stream, he revealed he had been handed the entire character library. “Wow! Wow!” he said while scrolling through dozens of instant unlocks. “Guys! I just got all the guys!”

For players, the problem was not the stream itself. Dead by Daylight starts people with a small selection of characters and makes them spend in-game currency to unlock the rest. Original Survivors and Killers cost a modest amount of earnable currency, while licensed characters, such as The Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes or Alien’s Xenomorph, run to around $5 of premium currency. Seeing all of that handed over for free, with no prior announcement, is what set people off.

The streamer himself was the bigger issue for many fans. TheBurntPeanut has drawn criticism for on-stream behavior that many consider offensive. Some defend him as simply “edgy.” Others in the community, which has spent a decade building a progressive reputation, said they felt Behaviour had betrayed players who had felt safe there. One popular post on X said the developer was pushing away creators who had devoted their careers to the game. A widely shared Reddit thread went further, describing the streamer as bigoted and calling his inclusion on the creator platform disappointing and disgusting.

The situation escalated when supposed screenshots of Twitch chat messages from a Behaviour employee began circulating online. The most damaging one read, “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT! THEY ARE YOURS TO KEEP!” Players said the message read as the studio backing the streamer against the people criticizing him.

A separate flashpoint was the reminder that this is not new. Players pointed to TheBurntPeanut’s inclusion in Fortnite earlier this summer, which also triggered a toxic backlash. One player shared screenshots of X users attacking the Dead by Daylight community, some using slurs, and argued that the studio’s official community account had still been proud to back the same kind of creator in that earlier episode. Others posted that they had uninstalled the game, including one who said they had logged 13.3K hours in it.

Then came the official statement. On the DbD Pulse account, Behaviour admitted that one of its team members had awarded a streamer in-game content “without receiving appropriate approvals.” The studio also said the team member’s subsequent comments and conduct “do not align with Dead by Daylight’s core values.”

“When concerns about this decision became apparent during the stream, we should have responded by looking into these concerns, not dismissing them.”

That line matters because it is the studio conceding the mistake was not just the unlock. Behaviour said the warning signs were visible while the stream was happening, and the company chose to dismiss them instead of investigating. The studio said it was “heartbroken” by the inflammatory language now aimed at its community, and it said it stood with players who want shared values upheld “regardless of popularity.” It also drew a hard line on harassment, stating that threatening employees “will never be acceptable” and asking everyone to stop engaging with those posts.

Some people moved to identify the employee responsible for the decision, and the studio has not confirmed who that is. Behaviour closed its statement with a direct apology: “We apologize to our community for letting you down. We have already begun reviewing our internal processes to prevent an incident like this from happening again.”

That apology has not landed well with a lot of players. Popular posts in the community called it a “nothing-burger.” Others criticized the choice to post it on the DbD Pulse account, which has 21.1K followers, rather than the official Dead by Daylight account with 1.3 million followers or the Behaviour Interactive account with 110.5K followers. Critics read that as an attempt to sidestep the loudest part of the audience.

Some players also questioned the business logic. One argued that the community most likely to buy the game’s Feng and Sable cosmetics is the progressive audience the studio has spent a decade building. That player said the streamer himself played for about two hours and then walked away, leaving the studio with neither new players nor the revenue it might have expected from his audience.

For now, the outcome is unclear. Behaviour has not said whether it will share more details about how the stream and content rewards came about, or what action it may take. What is clear is that a single unapproved decision has turned a Halloween promotion into a trust problem with the people who keep the game running.

The timing adds to the pressure. 2026 is the 10th anniversary of Dead by Daylight, a year that has included major reveals such as Jason from Friday the 13th and Art the Clown from Terrifier as playable characters. Last week, the studio also announced that Chucky from Child’s Play would soon no longer be available for purchase. The team later explained the reasoning behind that removal and whether he could return. This weekend’s episode is a different kind of speed bump, one that goes to how the studio decides who gets a platform inside its own game.