TheBurntPeanut backlash: Steam hides Dead by Daylight reviews, score rebounds

Steam has marked reviews posted on Dead by Daylight between Nov 1 and Nov 6 as off-topic, which pushed the game’s recent rating back up to Mostly Positive after it had dropped to Mixed, Dexerto reported Nov 7. The reviews came after Behaviour Interactive’s official account gave Twitch streamer TheBurntPeanut the game’s DLC during a livestream, and the developer later apologized and took the items back.

What did Steam change on the Dead by Daylight page?

The store page now shows an asterisk next to the review score. On Nov 7 the tooltip said the product “has experienced one or more periods of off-topic review activity” and that, based on the viewer’s preferences, reviews inside those periods are excluded from the score. The page showed Mostly Positive, with 79% of 269,406 reviews in the viewer’s language positive, and the last 30 days at 74% of 4,775. Those figures move constantly, so treat them as a Nov 7 snapshot.

Dexerto says the flagged window is Nov 1 to Nov 6 and that the all-language score sat around 78% positive from almost 950,000 reviews when it wrote the story. It also reports that the excluded reviews came from both sides: players angry at Behaviour, and fans of the streamer pushing back.

How does Steam’s off-topic review flag work?

According to Dexerto, Valve has used the system since 2019. When Steam detects a spike of reviews that have little to do with the game itself, it marks that stretch of time and leaves those reviews out of the score by default. Nothing is deleted. The reviews stay on the page, and a player can change the review filter to count them again. That is why the page says “based on your preferences.”

In practice: the number you see on the store page is the default view, and the full picture is one filter away. The flag also covers a date range, not individual reviews, so a review of the game itself written that week is excluded along with the protest posts.

How did a free-content gift become a review fight?

• Oct 30: During a stream, Dexerto says Behaviour gifted TheBurntPeanut every Dead by Daylight DLC. Shacknews describes the stream as a Halloween-weekend broadcast on official Dead by Daylight channels, and says the official Twitch account gifted all of the game’s content.
• During the stream: TheBurntPeanut offered to give the content back to calm things down. Dexerto says the game’s official account replied “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!”
• Nov 1: Behaviour posted a first apology. It said a team member awarded in-game content and currency to a creator “without receiving appropriate approvals,” and that the team member’s later comments “do not align with Dead by Daylight’s core values.” Shacknews reproduces the full text.
• Nov 3: A longer statement on the official X account confirmed the gifted content had been removed, per Dexerto. Behaviour said it normally checks a new creator’s past content against its inclusion values and that this “was not taken into proper consideration or discussed as a group.” It also said the “WE CAN TAKE THE HEAT!” reply “crossed the line.”
• Nov 6-7: Steam marked the Nov 1 to Nov 6 reviews as off-topic and left them out of the default score, per Dexerto.

What is Behaviour changing?

Per the Nov 3 statement as reported by Dexerto, Behaviour is rewriting its guidelines for working with creators, including who on the team can authorize gifts. The new rules are meant to flag creators whose past conduct conflicts with the inclusive community the studio says it wants. Approval steps for handing out content and currency, staff training and communication standards are being updated too. On the employees involved, the studio said it is “taking appropriate action internally” but called the matter confidential.

The statement also said the incident “has broken trust with our community” and that regaining it “will be a slow road.” Dexerto’s piece does not name the staff involved or say what the studio’s comments about TheBurntPeanut’s past content refer to, and this story does not either.

What this does and does not settle

The restored rating reflects Steam’s default view and says nothing about whether players are satisfied with Behaviour’s response. Dexerto’s report includes no studio comment on the Steam flag. For background on the streamer, see our earlier explainer on who TheBurntPeanut is and his 2026 Streamer Awards nomination.