Valve Filters Dead by Daylight Reviews After Streamer DLC Controversy

Dead by Daylight's Steam rating climbed back to Mostly Positive this week, but the recovery did not come from a sudden change of heart among players. Valve stepped in to filter reviews posted between November 1 and November 6, marking them as off-topic after the asymmetrical horror title became the target of a coordinated review-bombing campaign. The controversy erupted when Behaviour Interactive gifted paid DLC to streamer TheBurntPeanut during an October 30 stream, a decision that split the community into opposing factions and flooded the store page with reviews that had little to do with the actual gameplay experience.

For anyone considering a purchase, the restored Mostly Positive label — now sitting at 74 percent positive recent reviews — offers a cleaner signal than the Mixed rating that briefly replaced it. But the asterisk attached to that score tells its own story. Valve's review bomb filtering system, introduced in 2019, does not delete the excluded reviews; they remain visible to anyone who changes their Steam Review Score Settings to include them. The filter simply removes an anomalous period from the default calculation so prospective buyers see a score that reflects the game itself rather than a week of community warfare.

What Triggered the Review Bomb

The trouble began when TheBurntPeanut played Dead by Daylight on stream and a member of Behaviour's team granted him access to the game's paid DLC, including characters and perks. The studio later explained that staff had spotted an opportunity to introduce the game to a large new audience, but the gift went ahead without the usual internal approvals. Players quickly questioned Behaviour's willingness to support a creator whose previous content they felt conflicted with the inclusive environment the developer says it wants to maintain.

Things escalated when TheBurntPeanut offered to return the DLC and an official Dead by Daylight account responded with a dismissive message. The reply made it appear that the team was brushing off concerns before it had even considered them. Behaviour issued an initial apology on November 1, followed by a longer statement on November 3 that acknowledged staff had moved too quickly, admitted the response had escalated the dispute, and confirmed the gifted content had been removed from the streamer's account. The developer also promised to rewrite its creator guidelines, tighten the approval process for gifts, and provide further training to its staff.

Valve's statement on the filtering underscores a key distinction: the excluded reviews were not deleted, only removed from the default score calculation. Even an ordinary gameplay review written between November 1 and November 6 is left out of the default picture. This means the filter covers the entire date range indiscriminately, not just the negative posts about the controversy. For players who want the unfiltered view, Steam's review settings allow them to opt back in — but the default experience now shows a score that Valve considers more representative of the game itself.

A Community Split in Two Directions

The review bomb was unusual in that it came from two opposing groups simultaneously. Some players objected to Behaviour associating itself with TheBurntPeanut at all, while others were angered by the developer's decision to distance itself from him after the backlash. Both groups ended up expressing their frustrations on Steam, even though neither grievance was primarily about how Dead by Daylight plays. Game director Mathieu Côté has previously noted that the title hosts several distinct communities, a dynamic that likely amplified the competing narratives.

The apology has not pleased everyone. Players who objected to the DLC gift still question Behaviour's judgment in making it, while some of TheBurntPeanut's supporters believe the studio caved to pressure. The divide remains especially noticeable in a game that has cultivated multiple overlapping player bases over its eight-year lifespan. Valve's filter has improved the rating prospective buyers see, but it has not done anything to settle the dispute behind the reviews.

How Valve's Review Bomb System Works

Valve introduced its review bomb filtering system in 2019 to deal with coordinated campaigns centered on matters it considers unrelated to the experience of playing a game. The system identifies a period of unusually heavy review activity, investigates it, and can exclude that period from the score shown to most shoppers by default. In this case, the six-day window from November 1 to November 6 was flagged and filtered, reversing a slide toward a Mixed rating that would have persisted on the store page indefinitely.

The approach is blunt by design. Rather than attempting to surgically remove only the politically motivated reviews — a process that would require subjective judgment calls on every submission — Valve excludes the entire anomalous window. This means legitimate reviews written during those six days are collateral damage, but it also prevents bad actors from gaming the system by mixing genuine-sounding criticism into a coordinated campaign. For Dead by Daylight, the result is a Mostly Positive rating that reflects the longer-term consensus rather than a single turbulent week.

What This Means for Players

If you are browsing the Steam store today, you see a Mostly Positive rating with an asterisk noting that some reviews were excluded. Click through and you can read the filtered reviews yourself; they are not hidden, just deprioritized. For new players, this means the score you see is more likely to reflect the actual state of the game — matchmaking health, balance, content updates — rather than a referendum on a streamer partnership. For the existing community, the underlying tensions remain. Behaviour's promised policy changes around creator partnerships and internal approvals may address the procedural failures that started this episode, but the cultural fracture between the game's distinct player groups is not something a filter can fix.

Dead by Daylight launched on June 14, 2016, and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Stadia, Switch, and Mobile. Behaviour Interactive serves as both developer and publisher. The game carries an M for Mature rating from the ESRB for blood and gore, intense violence, and strong language.