Ready Or Not Was Controversial Long Before The “Censorship”

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ready or Not developer VOID Interactive has come under fire in recent weeks for the supposed censorship of its 'gritty cop simulator'. The outrage? Swapping a convulsing child for a sleeping one, giving female hostages underwear, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:removing the ability to dismem🌟ber corpses. Players say that these minor changes, which were made to secure an ESRB rating for the upcoming c🅰✤onsole launch, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:fly in the face of everything th🌸e game s🙈tands for.

They’re even attempting to organise a boycott, though 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it hasn’t worked so far.

Let’s get one thing straight first—Ready or Not isn’t a gritty cop simulator; it’s a SWAT fantasy. Armed with an arsenal befitting a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of Duty specialist, you’re sent into car dealerships and gas stations to gun down every criminal in sight. There is nothing realistic about it; it’s just as much cop cosplaying as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rainbow Six Siege and Battlefield Hardline before it.

It’s hardly surprising that the game has long drawn allegations of . Sure, you can take suspects into custody, but the game conditions you to see everyone as a potential enemy, with criminals feigning surrender before whipping out guns and forcing your hand to open fire. With each encounter, you’re groomed to think of everyone as a potentially life-threatening target, maꦿking it far easier to cut them down before they have the chance to act.

By positioning the police as victims, and pushing the narrative that Ready or Not is true to life, VOID has cultivated an audience who defends its enjoyment of the ☂edginess and sheer violence a police power fantasy offers by using the supposed ‘message’ behind the game as a blanket against any criticism. But amid its full launch, they're finally starting to hate the game. It’s just a shame that it’s for all the wrong reasons.

Ready Or Not Has Always Been Controversial

Ready or Not police officer standing over a black background.

When Ready or Not launched into early access back in 2021, it was mired in controversy. Almost immediately, the facade that this was supposed to be an introspective game about the reality of police work was ripped away. As reported by , at la🎃unch, you could ♈find a “red pill” box in the trash can with “Noggin Joggers” written on the side. There were also nods to Pepe, an alt-right dog whistle, and bystanders would yell things like “My mom has a Mexican maid, you might know her”.

VOID Interactive later issued an apology (albeit a backhanded one, arguing that Kotaku wrote “misleading headlines”), claiming that these were just ‘placeholders’ and that it does “not support or condone any form of racism, bigotry, or alt-right views”. It also clarified that these assets were provided by a contractor that it “no longer use[s]”. But that hardly matters. The fact that they made it into the game at all says everything—VO✃ID doesn't take the subject matter nearly as seriously as it should, and Ready or Not isn’t, and never has been, about depicting the ‘horrors of policework’ and the rꦯeality of the American justice system. It’s about extrajudiciary violence presented as justice.

Why Ready Or Not Is Known As The ‘School Shooter Game’

Ready Or Not: SWAT Officers Tactically Walking Towards A Doorway

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Only a year prior, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rea෴dy or Not lost its publisher, Team17. The pair “mutually🎶 agreed” to part ways after a developer told players that “you better believe it’s gonna” have a school shooting level. As of last year, they made good on their promise. The game now has a mission called ‘Elephant’, set in Watt Community College, where four students commit a mass shooting, and the D Platoon is sent to “arrest or neutralise any contact” and deactivate any bombs at the scene.

Ready or Not doesn’t have anywhere near the tact needed to handle something as sensitive as a school shooter scenario, as was so clearly proven by its early access period and the brazen way in which its developers jumped at the idea. Instead, it gamifies a terrifying reality, twisting it into a co-op level like it’s just another Payday heist.

There was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:even a Nightclub mission, immediately d൲rawing c🅘omparisons to the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016 where LGBTQ+ people were targeted.

There are vague attempts to treat it more seriously, like removing the music, but as with every other mission, it boils down to a labyrinthine arena to shoot targets in. It doesn't say anything meaningful or worthwhile about school shootings or how we respond to them—we all know and feel the sheer horror of these massacres every ༒time they hit the news. All that VOID is doing here is immersing you in such ꦰa scenario for cheap entertainment.

An Assault Team In Ready Or Not Preparing To Breach Into A Room.

Fans are turning on 🅰the game after four years, but censorship is the least of Ready or Not's problems. Altering and removing a few inessential features for a rating doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, and will be swept under the rug and forgotten in a matter of weeks. The real problem is that a game like this, which turns police brutality into just another mechanic, shouldn’t exist in the first place.