Superhot VR Review-Bombed Over Removal Of Self-Harm Scenes
Content warning: The following article contains references to suicide and self-harm.
The popular virtual reality title Superhot VR has recently received several negative reviews after developer SUPERHOT Team opted to remove scenes depicting self-harm and suicide from the story campaign. This is an instance of the controversial practice of review-bombing, which sees multiple users flooding a game's store page with negative reviews in order to drive away potential customers. This is usually done to protest a controversial removal or addition of content in the game.
Superhot VR brings the core Superhot mechanic of time only advancing when the player moves into a virtual reality space. The game received most of its attention for this distinct mechanic and its application in VR, but Superhot VR, like other entries in the series, also features a storyline with a focus on manipulation and control. These themes are expressed in-game through interactive narrative beats, including some potentially upsetting scenes depicting self-harm. At one point, the player is forced to bring a virtual gun to their head and pull the trigger to advance the plot.
SUPERHOT Team recently rethought these scenes' inclusion. As discussed in an update on Steam, the developer had previously added a "Skip disturbing scenes" option but then decided, "Considering [the] sensitive time we’re living in, we can do better than that." To that end, SUPERHOT Team has now removed the sensitive content from the game altogether. As reported by Kotaku, Valve began intercepting negative Superhot VR Steam reviews following the change. While Valve allows for constructive, good-faith criticism of games hosted on its platform, users inundating a game's store page with hostile comments is typically considered review-bombing and can result in posts being removed.
This is, of course, not the first time members of the video game community have reacted with overwhelming negativity toward the games they play. Unfortunately, some have even resulted to attacking the people who made the games they disagree with. For instance, the cast and crew of The Last of Us Part 2 received death threats after the game's release thanks to story elements that upset fans of the first game.
Sensitive content like the scenes removed from Superhot VR should be handled with extreme care. Discussions of game preservation and content moderation, especially of violent games like Superhot VR, may be worthwhile, but it's understandable SUPERHOT Team would want to avoid even the chance of harming any player's mental state, especially considering the recreational nature of video games.