Nervous gulps as Behaviour acquires Darkest Dungeon dev Red Hook a week after killing Dead By Daylight spin-off studio it acquired 2 years ago
Red Hook has been hooked. The Darkest Dungeon dev has been acquired by Behaviour Interactive, the company behind Dead By Daylight.
Which would, in an ideal world, be good news: A mutually beneficial arrangement that gets Red Hook the support it needs to make new games and that gives Behaviour a stake in them. That's certainly how the statements from each company's execs are selling it, anyway. Behaviour CEO Remi Racine says it's part of a plan to "make Behaviour synonymous with horror." Red Hook co-founder Chris Bourassa says the deal will let the studio "[open] the door to new possibilities."
“The way is lit. The path is clear.” Today, we’re ecstatic to announce our acquisition of Red Hook Studios. Darkest Dungeon has long been a series we’ve admired, enjoyed (and maybe even lost a little sleep over) as fans, and the opportunity to welcome Red Hook as a fully… pic.twitter.com/3SeO6kEZWsSeptember 24, 2024
All of which sounds good to me, but the problem is the context. Not only has Behaviour made a chunk of layoffs this year (which, to be fair, makes it far from unique—it's been a terrible time in general to work in game dev), but this announcement comes a mere week after Behaviour closed down Midwinter Entertainment, the team behind ill-fated Dead By Daylight PvE spin-off Project T. Behaviour had acquired Midwinter back in 2022, but killed off the studio—and Project T—after an internal playtest of the game "yielded unsatisfactory overall results."
So as a Darkest Dungeon fan, consider me hopeful Red Hook fares better. I think it's in a better position than Midwinter was: It comes under the Behaviour umbrella with a popular series (or, well, a very popular first game and a slightly more controversial sequel) already under its belt. That's a better foundation to build off than Midwinter had. That studio only had shut-down F2P shooter Scavengers to its name when it became a Behaviour subsidiary.
Building on Darkest Dungeon certainly sounds like the plan. The acquisition will let Red Hook "focus fully on transforming Darkest Dungeon into an absolute juggernaut of the dark fantasy genre," said Bourassa. His co-founder agrees: "There is a shared love of Darkest Dungeon, and with Behaviour’s help we can delve even deeper into the franchise," said Red Hook's Tyler Sigman. What's that gonna be, then—Darkest Daylight? Dead By Dungeon?