Abstract To date, most studies on the earthquake response of building structures with hysteretic dampers have defined the mechanical properties of dampers based on a required yield strength and stiffness. Moreover, some previous studies have also shown that the performance of hysteretic dampers is influenced by the damage in the main structure, especially in reinforced concrete (R/C) building structures. This suggests that the deformations of the main frame and hysteretic dampers should be carefully controlled. Therefore, this paper investigates the earthquake response of R/C building structures with hysteretic dampers and presents the ‘constant yield story-drift ratio’ as a deformation-controlling scheme for the definition of the yield deformation of hysteretic dampers. This scheme is also introduced to observe its influence on the performance of the R/C main structure when installing hysteretic dampers. To evaluate the structural performance, a parametric study is performed through non-linear time-history analyses on a series of ten-story R/C frames with hysteretic dampers defined by the proposed scheme. The results indicate that the scheme presented in this study may lead to a relatively constant distribution along the height of the reduction of floor displacements and seismic damage in the R/C main structure.