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SUPERHOT VR update removes "self harm" - "Considering sensitive time we’re living in, we can do better than that. You deserve better."

ShadowLag

ShadowLag

Member
One of the best VR games available.

store.steampowered.com

SUPERHOT VR - Important update (1.0.22.1) - Steam News

“Skip disturbing scenes” toggle was added in a previous update. Considering sensitive time we’re living in, we can do better than that. You deserve better. All scenes alluding to self harm are now completely removed from the game. These scenes have no place in superhot virtual reality. We regret...
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com

The game released on Steam 4 years ago (May 2017), and it's based on the idea of being in a Matrix-like reality where your own existence is in question and nothing is as it seems. One of the game's slogans is "mind is software".

The "self harm" in question is a couple of gameplay moments where you have to point your gun at your own head and pull the trigger to advance to the next level, really going in with the game's "who and what am I really?" story theme and teleporting you/your consciousness to the next scenario.

A previous update had added a toggle option to disable these scenes for those who were sensitive to them, but apparently someone decided that wasn't enough and this content was so offensive they got the devs to pull the sequences from the game entirely. They're currently getting review bombed on steam for this.


UPDATE:

After 27 pages of negative comments on the news post for the patch, the devs have locked the thread:

b032t1w.png



Recent reviews for the game on the store page have dropped from Very Positive to Mixed since I made this thread:

6lytlfw.png



Of course it's not okay to trash the devs or anyone else personally in the comments, but I think it's definitely the wrong way to be responding to their playerbase right now.
 
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Jibbajabbawockky

Jibbajabbawockky

Member
What? Oh come on, that's like the one thing you of course try to do in VR and it was cool for the game to actually respond to you doing that.

Of course it was kind of messed up but that was the whole damn point and it was neat that it was actually part of the gameplay/story. The toggle was fine as an option.

This is stupid and deserving of review bombs.
 
ArtemisClydeFrog

ArtemisClydeFrog

Banned
Jibbajabbawockky said:
What? Oh come on, that's like the one thing you of course try to do in VR and it was cool for the game to actually respond to you doing that.

Of course it was kind of messed up but that was the whole damn point and it was neat that it was actually part of the gameplay/story. The toggle was fine as an option.

This is stupid and deserving of review bombs.
Click to expand...

Interesting, so you support CANCEL CULTURE then? Review bombs can lead to poor sales, loss of jobs, loss of being able to support their families.

Alanis Morissette Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
 
spons

spons

Gold Member
I'm not kidding when I say that I've never seen any complaints about this anywhere.
CAB_Life said:
Didn’t Persona do something very similar? P4 maybe? I kinda stopped playing them so I don’t remember. Where are all the triggered weebs rallying to that cause? Oh, right, no one gives a shit.
Click to expand...
Shooting yourself in the head is part of Japan's deep and complex culture. Any self-respecting Westerner cannot possibly have an opinion about it because they wouldn't understand.

Anyway, gonna bet this bullshit originated on Twitter somewhere in someone's 20+ tweet thread.
 
Jibbajabbawockky

Jibbajabbawockky

Member
ArtemisClydeFrog said:
Interesting, so you support CANCEL CULTURE then? Review bombs can lead to poor sales, loss of jobs, loss of being able to support their families.

Alanis Morissette Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
Click to expand...
I support review bombs insofar as I find them informative when looking at Steam's review charts. Other sites like Metacritic and stuff, they're not useful but on Steam you can usually see when a game was review bombed and then usually find out why it was being review bombed- a bad update or bad patch or something like this.

I don't know how much the developers of SuperHot are really banking on huge sales of the game at this point in it's lifespan. Its kind of an old game so this update is just bizarre to me when it neuters kind of big point in the game.

The game is still cool as hell in VR but axing the whole creepy "Show your commitment" twist really makes the game far less memorable. Its a super dark and memorable moment I had with VR and getting rid of it makes Superhot VR a much less memorable game, IMO.
 
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Droxcy

Droxcy

Member
What? It's literally the best form of entertainment in VR when I'm playing Pavlov and you just have a group of people talking and then all hell breaks loose and the guns just point to their heads and bang!

World is getting too soft man should be a toggle option also it's an old game why bother with this kind of update now when you based a feature around it?
 
Optimus Lime

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
So, convincing the entire western world that there''s some unbelievable virtue in being an absolute and irredeemable pussy seems to be working out for everybody.

I'm sure this is a result of big pharma pumping estrogen into the chicken or something. How the fuck can our culture have gone from The Terminator to this raisin testicled horseshit in such a short stretch of time?

Judge Judy Reaction GIF
 
McCheese

McCheese

Member
The most memorable part of the whole game got removed? what the fuck

This isn't a minor thing most people won't notice is missing, without spoiling the games story - this is both the intro and conclusion to it, you can't just remove it without completely changing the story and tone of the game itself.

What next, Vacation Simulator to remove the vacation as we're in lockdown?
 
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Revolutionary

Revolutionary

Member
Deft Beck said:
I think this is self-censorship and they should have just settled with the toggle.
Click to expand...
I'm looking at the Steam reviews and some of them mention that it was already a toggle.
Edit: Oh wait, it says it in the OP too. My bad. Not sure why they didn't just leave it
 
Last edited:
ultrazilla

ultrazilla

Gold Member
ShadowLag said:
One of the best VR games available.

store.steampowered.com

SUPERHOT VR - Important update (1.0.22.1) - Steam News

“Skip disturbing scenes” toggle was added in a previous update. Considering sensitive time we’re living in, we can do better than that. You deserve better. All scenes alluding to self harm are now completely removed from the game. These scenes have no place in superhot virtual reality. We regret...
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com

The game released on Steam 4 years ago (May 2017), and it's based on the idea of being in a Matrix-like reality where your own existence is in question and nothing is as it seems. One of the game's slogans is "mind is software".

The "self harm" in question is a couple of gameplay moments where you have to point your gun at your own head and pull the trigger to advance to the next level, really going in with the game's "who and what am I really?" story theme and teleporting you/your consciousness to the next scenario.

A previous update had added a toggle option to disable these scenes for those who were sensitive to them, but apparently someone decided that wasn't enough and this content was so offensive they got the devs to pull the sequences from the game entirely. They're currently getting review bombed on steam for this.
Click to expand...

But you MUST SLAUGHTER EVERYONE ELSE IN THE GAME!!!
P.S. We hope you don't get shot but whatever you do, don't shoot yourself! :pie_savoring:

tenor.gif
 
Aion002

Aion002

Member
CAB_Life said:
Didn’t Persona do something very similar? P4 maybe? I kinda stopped playing them so I don’t remember. Where are all the triggered weebs rallying to that cause? Oh, right, no one gives a shit.
Click to expand...
In Persona 4 the characters uses toy guns and replicas that are used as catalysts to summon the Personas to cast magic against creatures of the underworld that lives inside the tv... Also, they only have magical powers inside the tv and them pointing the guns to their heads to summon the Personas is just accepting themselves or something (being cool and edgy probably).


Yeah... It's quite dumb and have a crap ton of plot holes. But that's animu...

Gordon Ramsay Food GIF by Masterchef



Also... The most important thing:


Japan doesn't care and gets a pass most of the time because waifus and stuff.
 
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JumpMan1981

JumpMan1981

Banned
Wouldn't something like this have been people's main fear when digital games were becoming a more popular thing?
That you could buy your game digitally and the automatic updates could change the game without your consent.
Even physical copies won't be immune to this has the version 1.0 can just be buggy as hell so you need to update.
Wow. I can't believe that a developer would do this post-launch and I wonder how far they could take it before they got some real serious backlash.
 
Old_and_Slow

Old_and_Slow

Member
Don't you still kill virtual people over and over again, in this game? If the devs feel so strongly about violence in videogames they should put their money where their mouth is and pull Superhot off the market.

When games and reality blur so much that it's hard to tell them apart, time for a new hobby.
 
ShadowLag

ShadowLag

Member
UPDATE:

After 27 pages of negative comments on the news post for the patch, the devs have locked the thread:

b032t1w.png



Recent reviews for the game on the store page have dropped from Very Positive to Mixed since I made this thread:

6lytlfw.png



Of course it's not okay to trash the devs or anyone else personally in the comments, but I think it's definitely the wrong way to be responding to their playerbase right now.
 
ShadowLag

ShadowLag

Member
McCheese said:
Steam community thread is something else, if you don't want to read 27 pages it's basically..

Developers: Here is a patch which leaves you with less game
Fans: What the fuck?
Developers: You are all racist *locks thread*
Click to expand...

I definitely didn't read through all of those comments (over 400 of them) but I definitely read several pages of them, skipping through pages randomly - and indeed 99% of what I saw was negative comments directly about the patch itself. I'm not sure where these horrible comments the dev speaks of are, but they are most definitely the minority.
 
Spukc

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
ShadowLag said:
UPDATE:

After 27 pages of negative comments on the news post for the patch, the devs have locked the thread:

b032t1w.png



Recent reviews for the game on the store page have dropped from Very Positive to Mixed since I made this thread:

6lytlfw.png



Of course it's not okay to trash the devs or anyone else personally in the comments, but I think it's definitely the wrong way to be responding to their playerbase right now.
Click to expand...
Spineless cowards 😂
 
Jibbajabbawockky

Jibbajabbawockky

Member
ZehDon said:
... this game released in December of 2016. At what point is a piece of art left alone to represent the artist and/or environment it was created in at that point in time? 10 years post release? 20 years?
Click to expand...
This is just some George Lucas levels of mucking up finished works.

If they want to be sensitive towards people that may get triggered or whatever, the existing warning plus option to not have the suicide elements was fine. That whole part of the game is supposed to be kind of dark and shocking. The added VR element makes it so and definitely memorable. Maybe its cause its a 5 year old game but its just bizarre to me that the developers go and make these changes now. Why?

And it also makes me very uneasy over so many digital games nowadays. I mean, the whole digital vs physical argument with games preservation has often seemed to center on how safe your games will be in a digital environment with respect to the platform holders- the whole "Can you play your Steam games if Valve goes bankrupt?" kind of thing. But with how overly sensitive developers seem to be getting, this episode has me worried what other games will have "problematic" content patched out of existence because some vocal minority on Twitter is clutching their pearls over it years after release.

This whole episode is just so strange, especially coming from Superhot. A game that was about as dark and subversive as you could get, especially in the VR setting. This whole thing seems like it should be an April Fool's joke or something coming from these developers, given the context of the rest of the game.
 
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Spukc

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Seems to be another dev comment.
From one of the devs
This is a valid point to which I have no answer. Yes, we did cut out a portion of the game, one of those that stirred some discussions.

However, I can personally ensure you that this wasn't really due to, how people on Steam like to put it, "snowflakes" forcing us. In all reality - there was no real outside force on us. This really was a decision driven by a feeling that the way the world looks now, the world in which we are and were to a large extent forced to separate from all other people and spend all of our time mostly alone, has changed the way this part of the game works. It's no longer just striking. We felt that people became a bit too lonely in general, to allow our game to incite this heavy depressive feeling. That there's just too much sadness to allow our game (something that should let you disassociate from the reality at least for a bit) drive people a little bit too far.

You know, I won't get into gritty details, but I personally really dislike how mental health institutions are portrayed in media. It's always so dark. It makes people feel like seeking help is equal to self-harm actually.
But in normal circumstances I can just, you know, appreciate the art. The story of, say, Lovecraftian horror. I can put my feelings about the social side of such portrayals aside.
Now, if the world was somehow under influence of a real mental health plague (there's no such thing, but let's imagine), I probably wouldn't be able to put my feelings aside like that.

And that's the thing. Lately there was just too much sadness and loneliness in the world, and we couldn't have predicted it when we made the game. But now the social context of those scenes has changed, so we took action.
Frankly, it's almost 1 AM in Poland here, so if I may - can I ask not to raise ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥? Discussion is fine, but not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, please
 
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