Dead by Daylight's Hellraiser Affair Caused by NFT Sales
Dead by Daylight was recently affected by an affair related to the Hellraiser Chapter DLC. All this is due to the cooperation of producers with Boss Protocol and Park Avenue Entertainment, as part of which content from the expansion is to be sold as NFTs.
In a nutshell:
- Content of the Hellraiser Chapter DLC for Dead by Daylight is to be sold as NFTs;
- It's the result of Behaviour Interactive's partnership with Boss Protocol and Park Avenue Entertainment;
- However, the developer denies that it will market NFT on its own;
- There is also the question of licensing.
NFT has been a popular topic lately. It is quite a controversial method of monetizing various tangible or intangible objects. Recently, it has also been appearing in video games. Now Dead by Daylight and its DLC titled Hellraiser Chapter have come under criticism. All because of the announcement about selling the content of the expansion via the aforementioned non-fungible tokens.
Behaviour Interactive's collaboration with Boss Protocol and Park Avenue Entertainment
Four days ago, Dead by Daylight's official Twitter account posted information that the game's developer Behaviour Interactive established cooperation with two companies - Boss Protocol, which deals in creation of NFTs, and Park Avenue Entertainment, which owns the rights to the Hellraiser brand. As it was stated, its aim was to adapt the models in the game to the possibility of selling them as non-fungible tokens.
What about Dead by Daylight being on Steam?
Quite recently, the world was abuzz with the news that Steam has started banning games (you can read about it here) that allow cryptocurrency or NFT exchange. In the case of Dead by Daylight the sale is done through an external company, and there is no blockchain technology in the game itself. The chance of the title being removed from the store is therefore rather slim.
What's important, along with the above information the devs also posted a link to Boss Protocol's website, where we can read the details of the offer. It shows that the pool is 10,000 NFTs. They will guarantee, among other things, access to Hellraiser Chapter DLC in Dead by Daylight on PC (only selected purchasers will receive it, however) and the Pinhead character model included in the expansion. Those who decide to purchase it will also receive content unrelated to the game.
Fans have been extremely critical of the whole situation. The post on Twitter and Reddit flooded with a ton of comments, in which the community did not hide its disappointment with Behaviour Interactive's attitude. The latter even created a special large thread that summarized the entire situation.
On Steam, however, the so-called review bombing took place. Shortly after the announcement of the collaboration hundreds of negative comments appeared on the tab dedicated to the problematic DLC.
Behaviour Interactive's ambiguous position
The whole situation is not helped by the fact that looking at the posts published on Twitter, it can be concluded that Behaviour Interactive does not have a clear stance on NFTs. Even before the announcement of the cooperation with Boss Protocol and Park Avenue Entertainment, a post appeared in which the creators inform that they have nothing to do with the whole action and only shared content from the game with the license holders.
After all the commotion, another post appeared, in which the studio stressed that they are not selling NFTs and there is no blockchain-based technology in their game.
Of course, the entry advertising the sale of NFT related to Hellraiser Chapter still hangs between these two posts. This creates a certain inconsistency in the studio's narrative. This is because on the one hand we have the devs' attempt to disassociate themselves from NFT, and on the other we have a collaboration with the companies that sell it. However, it should be kept in mind that Behaviour Interactive does not own the license, so it is possible that the developers had no choice but to take part in this. This can be evidenced, among other things, by the fact that the NFT is also supposed to include content unrelated to Dead by Daylight.
Confusion with the Hellraiser license
It is worth keeping in mind that Park Avenue Entertainment lost a court case with the creator of Hellraiser, Clive Barker. As a result, they will lose the rights to the brand in December. However, the ruling only talks about the United States territory. We don't know how the situation will look like in other countries. So it is possible that the company is trying to monetize the IP quickly before it loses control over it.
One thing is certain - Behaviour Interactive continues to be criticized by fans. Some of them are even calling for a boycott of the game. However, the situation is so complicated that it's hard to judge whether this is the right approach.
