Revision 2

Overview

Behaviour Interactive is a Montreal-based game development studio and the publisher of Blight: Survival. The company is best known for developing and operating Dead by Daylight, the asymmetric horror multiplayer game that has become one of the most successful games in the horror genre. Their experience with horror games made them a natural fit for publishing Blight: Survival.

Company background

Behaviour Interactive was founded in 1992 in Quebec City under the name Megatoon. Two years later, CEO Remi Racine co-founded Montreal-based Multimedia Interactive (MMI). Both companies were sold to Malofilm Communications in 1996 and merged into what became Behaviour Interactive, with Racine continuing as general manager. Today the company is the largest Canadian gaming company, employing nearly 1,300 people across studios in Montreal, Toronto, Seattle, the UK, and the Netherlands.

Their breakthrough came with Dead by Daylight, which launched in 2016 and has maintained a large, active player base through continuous content updates, licensed character crossovers, and a strong competitive community. Behaviour purchased Dead by Daylight's publishing rights from Starbreeze in 2018 for US$16 million.

Dead by Daylight's success established Behaviour as a company with deep expertise in the horror game space. The game's 4v1 multiplayer format, where one player controls a killer and four play as survivors trying to escape, became a genre-defining template. This horror expertise is part of what made the partnership with Haenir Studio compelling: Blight: Survival's medieval horror setting aligns with Behaviour's proven strengths.

Partnership with Haenir Studio

On April 30, 2024, Behaviour Interactive and Haenir Studio announced their publishing partnership. Stephen Mulrooney, Behaviour's Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, stated that working with talented studios like Haenir Studio in this type of partnership would be a focus as Behaviour looks to "publish more and more external games."

Mads Christensen, Haenir Studio's co-founder, described the partnership as signaling "the next major phase of development" for Blight: Survival. The arrangement gives Haenir access to Behaviour's resources, industry expertise, and publishing infrastructure while the smaller studio retains creative control over the game's direction.

Publishing role

As publisher, Behaviour Interactive handles the business side of bringing Blight: Survival to market. This includes marketing, distribution, platform relationships, localization coordination, and providing the operational support that a growing indie studio needs to focus on development. Behaviour's established relationships with platform holders like Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox are assets that a studio of Haenir's size would not have on its own.

The partnership also represents Behaviour's expansion beyond self-publishing. While the company has primarily developed and published its own titles, the Blight: Survival deal signals an interest in becoming a third-party publisher for external studios, particularly in the horror and action-horror genres where Behaviour has established credibility.

Relevance to Blight: Survival

Behaviour's horror game pedigree is directly relevant to Blight: Survival's design. The game's atmosphere of dread, its Blight-infected enemies, and its tension between combat and survival all draw from the same horror design principles that make Dead by Daylight work. Having a publisher with deep understanding of what makes horror games effective allows Haenir Studio to focus on execution without needing to educate their publisher on the genre's conventions and audience expectations.