Ready or Not dev tells players they can mod sensitive material back into the FPS

Ready or Not developer Void Interactive says that PC players may use mods to replace material that has been altered for the console release. The studio is making changes to the tactical FPS to meet first-party console certification requirements, revising in-game instances of gore, nudity, and other extreme material to prepare for the game's move to other platforms. These alterations will also be reflected in the PC version, which has led to players significantly review bombing the shooter on Steam. Now, Void Interactive tells its community that it may use mods to reverse these changes, and also offers more details on why maintaining two separate versions of the game is not practically possible.

Ready or Not is coming to consoles on Tuesday July 15, and to meet certification requirements on these platforms Void Interactive is making some changes to the game. Primarily, this means some instances of graphic violence and nudity are being altered. For example, shooting dead enemy NPCs will not allow players to dismember them any further. Instances of "explicit" nudity have also been "covered up a bit more."

These changes are also coming to the PC version of the FPS game, as Void Interactive says they are required to enable functional crossplay. "If the in-game assets were not the same it would make crossplay unusable," Void says. "The game content must be equal or basically equal for multiplayer to work."

These changes have led to a massive influx of negative reviews from players concerned about censorship. As of writing, Ready or Not's recent Steam reviews sit at a 'mostly negative,' with only 23% of the 17,000 most recent reviews being favorable.

"A fantastic game ruined by the decision to censor the more graphic elements," one respondent writes. "It was these elements that made Ready or Not the visceral game it was. Massively disappointing."

Since then, Void Interactive has issued a follow-up statement to clarify what is calls "misconceptions and misinformation circulating around the scope of these changes." The team says that the effects of gore and violence, which are "key to the game's immersive realism," have not been toned down.

"Void Interactive has always believed in creative freedom and the right to build experiences that push boundaries in the service of immersion and realism," the studio says. "That will not change."

On Ready or Not's official Discord server, Void Interactive community manager 'Kaminsky' explains further. One user asks if it'll be possible for players to reverse the changes made for the console release using mods. "Yup," Kaminsky replies. "You can just mod everything back in." It should be noted that crossplay between the console and PC versions of Ready or Not will not work if the PC player has mods enabled.

As for the possibility of creating two different Ready or Not builds, one for PC, one for console, Kaminsky outlines why this is unfeasible.

"There are fundamental issues with game-sync that we don't have the ability to fix for a variety of reasons," Kaminsky says. "You introduce extra problems when you support two different builds. Maintaining two builds means double certification time, double certification costs, double compiling time, double QA time, and the non-zero possibility of drift between the two versions."

Kaminsky also shares some insights on Ready or Not's development and update process, off the back of what the team is doing alongside these certification changes. "Part of it is updating older levels, which has taken a lot on top of unraveling spaghetti code and getting back a lot of developmental debt to make future changes possible. Basically just pulling the game apart and untangling it, then putting it back together.

"Unfortunately the consumer only sees those changes as minor performance upgrades, but it very much does make any future changes quicker and easier."

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