Ready or Notdeveloper 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, andremoving the ability to dismember corpses. Players say that these minor changes, which weremade to secure an ESRB rating for the upcoming console launch,fly in the face of everything the game stands for.
They’re even attempting to organise a boycott, thoughit 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 aCall of Dutyspecialist, 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 asRainbow Six Siegeand Battlefield Hardline before it.
It’s hardly surprising that the game has long drawn allegations of“disgusting copaganda” that “proudly valorises police brutality”. 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, making 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
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 byKotaku, at launch, 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—VOID 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 reality of the American justice system. It’s about extrajudiciary violence presented as justice.
Why Ready Or Not Is Known As The ‘School Shooter Game’
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Only a year prior,Ready 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 anotherPaydayheist.
There waseven a Nightclub mission, immediately drawing comparisons 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 andfeelthe sheer horror of these massacres every time they hit the news. All that VOID is doing here is immersing you in such a scenario for cheap entertainment.
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.
