Earlier this week, a report from Game Informer revealed CD Projekt Red's latest release, Cyberpunk 2077, featured visuals that were capable of triggering a seizure.
A Microsoft spokesperson, in response to this report, has reiterated to GamesRadar how the company is committed to making its platforms as safe and inclusive as possible and will continue to improve its certification process.
"Creating a place that is safe and inclusive is a priority for us. That's why we publish and share our accessibility guidelines with all of our gaming partners."
"We continue to work on partnership with other publishers, industry experts, and members of the gaming and disability community to evolve and improve our certification process and we encourage all players to review warnings on all games"
CD Projekt Red previously responded to Game Informer's report, saying it would work on a more permanent solution and would implement it as soon as possible.
"Thank you for bringing this up. We’re working on adding a separate warning in the game, aside from the one that exists in the EULA (https://cyberpunk.net/en/user-agreement/…). Regarding a more permanent solution, Dev team is currently exploring that and will be implementing it as soon as possible."
It's seemingly been sorted out in the latest update for the game, which you can read more about in our latest post.
How do you feel about all of this? Let us know in the comments below.
[source gamesradar.com]
Comments 4
Its not necessarily 'bad' that CDPR had a creative idea that happened to induce an Epileptic Seizure in someone. Its difficult to know that their vision would have had that impact and probably designed it that way because they thought it looked 'cool'.
What is 'important' though is the response once a company finds out its a problem. CDPR could very easily of just said its part of the game design and decide to just make a warning and opt to let people decide whether or not they can take the chance - but they opted to make changes to try and reduce, if not eliminate the risk and therefore must be commended.
You can test certain things with numerous groups and none of them will have an issue with it. However, if when its released, they find someone does, its how they respond that matters.
@Medic_Alert Agreed, they shouldn't be condemned as they have make quick attempts to fix it, but nor should they be praised as they're basically just doing their job at this point
@Medic_Alert They could have just settled for making it more obvious that the game has a potential risk to those with Epilepsy and not done anything to try and alter the cause. Like film makers don't take out scenes with flashing lights or change the scene - even now when that is more widely known as a trigger.
They could have settled for saying its part of the artistic intent and that its up to people to heed the warnings - especially if they make it much more 'obvious'. From a legal standpoint, they would not be accountable - just like movies don't get pulled from sale with those 'warnings' at the start too or companies don't get sued if someone with a nut allergy eats their products with a warning that it may contain 'nuts'. The ones that do get sued are those that fail to mention it.
Of course games are a bit easier to amend than a film. You can of course cut the scene or change/edit the lighting but you still have to commend CDPR for actually changing their game and doing it very quickly too with a lot of other issues also affecting the game. Like I said, they could have just patched in a bigger and clearer warning and not made any changes, at least not as a priority. They have to be commended for fixing the issue quickly.
Only ~3% of Epileptics are Photosensitive and around 1.5% of people are Epileptic so its a very small group of people that could be affected by this game yet CDPR have made that a priority to fix. Of course its more life threatening than the 'millions' of disgruntled players trying to play the game with crashes and poor performance that also needs fixing but the point I was trying to make is that its still good that CDPR have tried to fix this as soon as possible instead of just covering themselves with making it more obvious there is a potential risk and then if people do suffer, its on them for not heeding the warnings.
Honestly this sounds like one of those things where it only effects a tiny minority of people who should be exercising a lot of caution around video games and anything to do with TV's in the first place. Like watching cable TV or a movie is just as much of a risk for those people. Seems like it got blown way out of proportion with Cyberpunk for some reason, it's hardly the first game that could give someone a seizure if they have an extreme case of epilepsy.
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