Dead by Daylight Jumps to Positive Ratings After Steam Hides 'Off-Topic' Reviews Following BurntPeanut Backlash

Dead by Daylight has returned to 'Mostly Positive' recent reviews on Steam after Valve labeled a chunk of ratings surrounding TheBurntPeanut backlash as 'off-topic.'

To catch you up to speed, developer Behaviour Interactive's recent work with controversial streamer TheBurntPeanut landed its asymmetrical horror game in the line of fire. A few apologetic posts and hundreds of comments later, Dead by Daylight spent much of this week showing declining favorability ratings on Steam (via SteamDB) – but that now seems to be a thing of the past.

Check out its Steam page today, and you'll find that Dead by Daylight now boasts 'Mostly Positive' reviews, with a little asterisk clarifying the reasoning for this sudden jump. A disclaimer shared in the reviews section of its page notes that the dates between November 1 – 6 have been noted for off-topic activity. Valve explained that the range has been "marked as containing an abnormal set of reviews that we believe are largely unrelated to the likelihood that you would enjoy the product." As a result, "the reviews within this period are excluded from the Review Score by default."

Steam users have the freedom to unmark the reviews Steam has deemed to be off-topic. Doing so reflects a 'Mixed' score instead, with the Mostly Positive rating shown by default. After a week of back-and-forth between Behaviour and its community, fans generally have been unhappy with Dead by Daylight, even if the reaction comes from behavior outside of the game itself. Although reviews may seem to be back on track, fans across social media still want to make their voices heard.

"They can't reverse the damage to their reputation or s***ty customer service," one player said.

"In this case, Valve is wrong," another argued. "The negative reviews were completely justified."

Meanwhile, there has been some confusion from the Dead by Daylight community regarding what Valve's process is for labeling reviews as off-topic. It's something the company directly addressed in a 2019 blog post, with it, at the time, saying its goal was to remove anomalous activity that could inaccurately reflect a game's rating based on factors the average player doesn't care about.

It's Valve's attempt to combat review-bombing campaigns that it's incorporated for years, with it saying that it had developed a tool "that identifies any anomalous review activity on all games on Steam in as close to real-time as possible." Its description continued: "It doesn't know why a given game is receiving anomalous review activity, and it doesn't even try to figure that out. Instead, it notifies a team of people at Valve, who'll then go and investigate."

If investigators believe activity within a certain period fits the definition of off-topic, Valve will "mark the time period it encompasses and notify the developer." How the Steam company's process for identifying and neutralizing inauthentic reviews may have changed in the last seven and a half years is unclear. IGN has reached out to Behaviour and Valve for comment and clarification.

As Dead by Daylight returns to general positivity on Steam, the period of controversy does seem to have come to an end. Behaviour's most recent public comment on the matter saw it clarify that it had removed gifted content from TheBurntPeanut's account, while promising that it would be "taking appropriate action" regarding how the incident happened in the first place.

Last month, the studio announced Child's Play Killer Chucky would be the latest icon removed from sale. It told IGN in a statement that Killers will "continue to have an open invitation to join (or rejoin)."