Ready or Not: Review bombing for nonsense

In case you weren't aware, there's a rather concerted effort to review bomb the SWAT 4 spiritual successor (and all-around incredible tactical sim game) Ready or Not.

Why are they being review bombed right now?

Is it because people suddenly went really far in ACAB activism? No. While I'm firmly in the extremely woke left camp, I am comfortable acknowledging the fantasy aspect of the game.

Is it because folks modded in the ICE SRT uniform into the game? No (although fuck that mod, it's not the dev's fault).

Is it because they went "woke"? No (dammit, I wish, although as far as I am aware it's not anti-woke either).

The Ready or Not steam page is being review bombed because they made some of the subtle details of the level and character designers less Oh fuck that's messed up for the console market.

Things like a wild-ass bad guy wearing a ghillie top and nothing else now wearing underwear. A woman sleeping instead of having a seizure. Evidence to be collected no longer being visually depicted as CSAM.

You can see the full explainer from VOID Interactive, but needless to say, it's not anything that significantly alters the game in any way.. And it gets more people buying it and playing it.

Again, just to reiterate: NO CORE GAMEPLAY IS CHANGING. Literally all that is changing is some minor visuals.

But, but.. They could add a toggle for that content, so we could still have it on PC, right?!?

VOID is not a big development studio. This is a small extremely niche game, and the fact that they are doing a console release at all is fucking amazing.

And, because of this fact, they are getting hit with reviews like this.

Here's a couple relevant quotes from the above review..

Their own Community Manager (Kaminsky) confirmed on Steam that no matter how the PC community feels, this is a done deal. There will be no option to keep the original version or avoid the forced update. To chase console sales, they’re showing utter apathy and throwing their original Steam/PC supporters under the bus.

Throwing us under the bus? Really? How so? I mean, the game was never advertised as having you collect images that look like a very bad person's extremely illegal spank bank, and I don't think that was a selling point for most of us.

And like other studios before them, the developers will no doubt claim they are the victims here, while friendly “game journalists” rush in to defend this anti-consumer practice. Don’t fall for it.

Anti-consumer practice?

I have to wonder.. Did this person buy the game because of the sniper hanging dong? I mean, that's fine; I'm bi, I appreciate a good dong, but.. contextually, it really doesn't seem to make the game any worse for the nudity and whatnot being cut down to make it console-friendly.

I do get wanting to preserve artistic vision of creative endeavors; I'm an artist myself, and I have had to sometimes make tough choices as to whether to censor my work or not in some ways (for example - I rarely use the word fuck uncensored in the morale patches I make and sell) in order to make some things more accessible. And those times I do censor myself? I do that because saying fuck uncensored is not critical to appreciation of the work.

Now, there are pieces where I don't censor myself. Obviously, this blog (because this blog is 100% for me and my niche audience), but also, some of my recent anti-ICE merch uses "fuck" uncensored, because it demands that impact.

In my fucking opinion Ready or Not's review bombing is fucking dumb and unwarranted..

.. And I sure as fuck bet that most of the asshats who were still playing the game by the time the changes were announced will keep fucking playing it after.

Anyway, Ready or Not is on sale right now, and if you're old like me and remember classic Rainbow 6 or SWAT 4 relatively fondly, you should go buy it and support the developers (assuming you're OK with playing as a cop - no judgements from me on that front, especially given the current political climate).