Void Interactive has confirmed the console port of its violent shooter, Ready or Not, has been changed “as absolutely required by our first party partners”, including tweaks to dismemberment/gore, nudity, mistreatment of children, and “explicit representations of violence”. And in some instances, these changes may be applied to the PC version, too.
In an update posted to Steam, the team said that after some changes, the game secured a PEGI 18 / USK 18 / ESRB M-rating, and was “fortunate enough […] to pass certification for the launch on our first submission”. Void was now “relieved” to be finished with the console launch certification process and says any changes made “remain faithful to the original tonality of the game”.
“Maintaining multiple versions of the game with different assets and system mechanics increases the likelihood of bugs to occur in future updates, and subsequent challenges keeping the game updated across multiple versions,” the team explained, justifying why it’s had to tweak the PC version, too. “Think lighting or optimisation issues, for example (or any number of unexpected bugs from maintaining different versions).
“If the in-game assets were not the same, it would make crossplay unusable; the game content must be equal or basically equal for multiplayer to work. Different versions of assets affects multiplayer replication, which is the ability for the server to understand what’s happening in-game and host players in the same lobby/server.”
Player-induced dismemberment “still has a large presence” in the game, “but is a little more limited as to when it occurs”, and you can’t, for example, keep dismembering an enemy once it’s dead. Tangentially, character art “involving torture were turned down slightly to be less over-the-top”. The team has also had to “cover up” some characters “a bit more”.
“Although we already make a substantial effort to present mistreatment against children in the game in a responsible way, we made slight thematic expansions of this philosophy in order to better meet certification standards,” the team explained when it came to violence against children. “For example, the child on Twisted Nerve has had an animation change to be unconscious/sleeping, instead of the previously convulsive animation from before that had a violent appearance.
“The changes with the console version are small enough that most people here wouldn’t notice if we didn’t say anything, but we want to be transparent. It’s largely just evidence and nudity that’s altered, and the texture changes don’t affect the PC version.” In-game evidence of “illicit child stuff” has also been censored, but only in the console version.
Some fans have responded to the changes by review-bombing the game on Steam, citing “cowardly” “censorship“.
Ready or Not will release for consoles on 15th July, 2025.
Void Interactive lost the publisher for Ready or Not days after it confirmed the game would include a school shooting mission. The game was released in early access on 17th December, but in a statement on Twitter shortly afterwards, Void Interactive said it had parted ways with publisher Team17.
Though no reasons were given at the time, the change came shortly after a developer responded to a Reddit post about including a school shooting with the statement: “You better believe it’s gonna”. Ready or Not was also briefly taken offline in 2022 following a trademark dispute.
