Last week, Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive laid off an at-the-time undisclosed number of its employees. It claimed that these individuals were largely affiliated with “mobile and casual external development projects” and were being let go due to a decrease in demand for such projects. But the company also confirmed to Kotaku that developers on its flagship horror franchise Dead by Daylight were among those laid off, and the timing of the cuts, so closely following both a recent union push at the company as well as unrest over changing policies, has some questioning the motives behind the cuts.
Alongside official news of the layoffs last week was a Reddit post claiming that a union organization had recently approached the company and handed out fliers, suggesting a potential connection between the two incidents. I spoke to a few former employees who confirmed for me that Game Workers Unite (GWU) Montreal, a volunteer-run labor organization, did indeed show up several weeks ago and passed out pamphlets.
Those people also told me that internally at Behaviour, employees had recently voiced concerns both about the handling of a return-to-office policy, as well as around proposed use of generative AI at the company. At least a couple of those more vocal employees, I was told, were impacted by the layoffs.
In a statement to Kotaku, Behaviour denied there was any connection between any of this and the layoffs. The company’s statement read as follows:
We want to emphatically refute the suggestion made in the Reddit comment you referenced. These layoffs were in no way related to any employee’s sentiments regarding unionization, AI or anything else.
These adjustments are about aligning specific teams and roles with the demand we’re seeing on the external development side of our business and projects’ changing priorities on the first-party side of our business. We recognize the impact on those affected and are committed to providing meaningful support throughout this transition.
We all know this is a challenging time for our industry. Behaviour is constantly trying to adapt to best navigate these challenges. Adapting has allowed us to maintain a strong position, supported by a highly engaged player base and longstanding partnerships. We continue to hire different roles across many projects, including Dead by Daylight.
According to Behaviour, it was mostly mobile and casual external dev projects impacted by its recent layoffs due to a reduction of interest in both. This is almost certainly technically true, but it doesn’t paint a complete picture. The company also told Kotaku that roughly 3 percent of its workforce was impacted in total. Behaviour said as recently as March that it employs over 1,300 people worldwide, which puts the total number laid off at nearly 40 individuals.
Behaviour also told Kotaku that roughly 2 percent of the Dead by Daylight team specifically was impacted. Between 400 and 500 people apparently work on Dead by Daylight, which means between 8 and 10 individuals on that team got let go. So one-fourth of the total laid-off workers were on Dead by Daylight, the company’s flagship game. I was also able to find at least one person announcing they had been let go who most recently worked on Serious Sam Shatterverse, a console and PC game that was announced last month.
Even generously assuming this is the full extent of those on major projects who were let go, it’s clear these layoffs had a wider impact than is being suggested and at a time when the company is, by all accounts, doing well. It currently has 35 open roles listed on its website, and I just interviewed Behaviour head of partnerships Mathieu Cote and Dead by Daylight creative director Dave Richard at the Game Developer’s Conference last month, where we spent nearly an hour talking about how great Dead by Daylight, and by extension the whole company, was doing, and how excited they were to keep scaling up.
It is unlikely that, outside a rare lawsuit, we will ever know for certain if union busting was a part of the motivation for these layoffs or not. I also spoke with GWU Montreal, which said it “can’t confirm that [retaliatory layoffs are] what happened at Behaviour.” However, GWU also acknowledged it was “aware of the rumours” and encouraged anyone who feels they were retaliated against for expressing pro-union sentiment to “contact us for support and to discuss their rights.”
