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

pcgamer.com:

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