Behaviour buys Darkest Dungeon developer Red Hook just a week after it killed the Dead By Daylight spinoff studio that it acquired two years ago

Red Hook is hooked. Behaviour Interactive (the company behind Dead By Daylight) has acquired the Darkest Dungeon dev.

In an ideal world, this would be a good thing: a mutually beneficial agreement that gives Red Hook the support they need to create new games, and that gives Behaviour an interest in them. It's at least how each company's executives are selling it. Remi Racine, CEO of Behaviour, says the deal is part of a strategy to "make Behaviour synonymous" with horror. Red Hook cofounder Chris Bourassa said the deal would allow the studio to "[open] new possibilities."

The context is what makes this sound bad. Behaviour has made a lot of layoffs in the past year, which is not unique. It's a bad time to be a game developer in general. This announcement comes just a week after Behaviour shut down Midwinter Entertainment. The team behind the ill-fated Dead By Daylight PvE Spin-off Project T. Behaviour acquired Midwinter in 2022 but closed the studio and Project T after an internal playtest "yielded unsatisfactor

As a Darkest Dungeon enthusiast, I hope Red Hook does better. I think Red Hook is in a much better position than Midwinter: It's under the Behaviour banner and already has a popular series under its belt (or, a very successful first game, and a slightly controversial sequel). This is a much better foundation than Midwinter's. This studio was known for the F2P shooter Scavengers, which was shut down when it became a Behaviour sub-division.

It sounds like the plan is to build on Darkest Dungeon. The acquisition will allow Red Hook to "focus fully on turning Darkest Dungeon [into] an absolute juggernaut in the dark fantasy genre," Bourassa said. Tyler Sigman, Red Hook's co-founder, agrees. "There is a common love of Darkest Dungeon and with Behaviour’s help we can dive even deeper into the series," said Tyler Sigman. What's it gonna be then -- Darkest Daylight? Dead By Dungeon?