Dead by Daylight returned to “mostly positive” recent reviews on Steam after Valve called part of the notes surrounding TheBurntPeanut’s reaction “off-topic.”
To keep you up to date, developer Behavior Interactive’s recent work with controversial streamer TheBurntPeanut has landed its asymmetrical horror game. in the line of sight. A some apology messages and hundreds of comments later, Dead by Daylight spent much of this week showing declining favorability ratings on Steam (via SteamDB) – but that now appears to be a thing of the past.
Check out its Steam page today and you’ll see that Dead by Daylight is now showing “mostly positive” reviews, with a small asterisk clarifying the reasoning for the sudden jump. A warning shared in the reviews section of its page states that dates between November 1 and 6 have been noted for off-topic activity. Valve explained that the lineup has been “marked as containing an anomalous set of reviews that we believe are largely irrelevant to the likelihood that you will enjoy the product.” As a result, “reviews during this period are excluded from the review score by default.”
Steam users have the freedom to uncheck reviews that Steam has deemed off-topic. This instead reflects a “Mixed” score, with the “Mostly Positive” rating displayed by default. After a week of back-and-forth between Behavior and its community, fans have generally been unhappy with Dead by Daylight, even if the backlash comes from behavior outside of the game itself. Even though the critics seem to be back on track, fans on social media still want to make their voices heard.
“They can’t repair the damage to their reputation or poor customer service,” one player said. said.
“In this case, Valve is wrong,” another argued. “The negative reviews were completely justified.”
Meanwhile, there has been some confusion within the Dead by Daylight community over Valve’s process for labeling reviews as off-topic. This is something the company directly addressed in a 2019 blog post, saying at the time that its goal was to remove anomalous activity that could inaccurately reflect a game’s rating based on factors the average gamer doesn’t care about.
It’s Valve’s attempt to combat the review bombing campaigns it has incorporated for years, saying it has developed a tool “that identifies any abnormal review activity across all games on Steam as close to real-time as possible.” His description continues: “He doesn’t know why a given game is receiving anomalous review activity, and he doesn’t even try to figure it out. Instead, he informs a team of people at Valve, who will then go investigate.”
If investigators believe that activity during a certain time period meets the definition of off-topic, Valve will “mark the time period it encompasses and notify the developer.” It’s unclear how Steam’s process for identifying and neutralizing inauthentic reviews may have changed over the past seven and a half years.
When asked for clarification, Behavior told IGN that it “is not at liberty to discuss platform partner (review) processes” and highlighted its most recent statement relating to this week’s controversy. IGN has also reached out to Valve for comment and clarification.
As Dead by Daylight returns to general positivity on Steam, the period of controversy indeed appears to have ended. Behavior most recent public comment regarding this, he clarified that he had removed the gifted content from TheBurntPeanut’s account, while promising that he would “take appropriate action” regarding how the incident happened in the first place.
Last month, the studio announced that Child’s Play Killer Chucky would be the last icon removed from sale. He told IGN in a statement that the Killers “will continue to receive an open invitation to join (or join)”.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer at IGN. He is best known for his work on sites like The Pitch, The Escapist and OnlySP. Be sure to follow him on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
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