Fatshark. Your game is now causing adverse health reactions in your player base. Anyone who used the Surge staff today experienced what can only be described as a visual assault on their mental facilities. My own experience with this today, and the experience of others suggests you are at the very least causing massive eye strain and migraines in your player base.
A little bit of Google shows that at the peak of adverse reactions you could cause someone to go into convulsions or even a coma. These are reactions that HEALTHY people can have! Perfectly healthy individuals can have their brain scrambled by a visual assault. The military has been playing around with visual and audible attacks for decades with high success when used in small settings against a small number of bodies. You have one of these “weapons” in your game! Not everyone reads your patch notes or keeps up on forums/twitter/reddit. One of these people could boot up your game not knowing what is in store for them or another person in the room.
There are a number of SERIOUS medical conditions that can be exacerbated by this insane light show you’ve given us. The seizure warning you and every game maker puts in their game does NOT cover you releasing content that is purposefully unhealthy for your player base to experience.
Why didn’t you IMMEDIATELY disable the Surge staff and/or come out with a very plain as day announcement about this? A warning should be plasterd all over the Launcher right now informing people to NOT use that staff until fixed as it can have adverse health reactions.
This is serious and I hope for all your sakes that no one suffers a serious medical emergency because of your incompetence.
I’m absolutely floored by your company right now.
I have a severe sensitivity to bright lights and this vfx made me feel sick after playing half a mission with i had to stop and rest my eyes. God forbid someone with epilepsy played with this vfx and had a seizure.
they dont care. they “raise” the issue and then it gets added on the pile.
theyll tell you they care. coz if they dont, they dont have a job.
the fact it passed QA in that state and without being able to adjust it is abhorrent.
I unfortunately also have a disability and its so fvcking ridiculous. To the point of now having a deep deep hatred for the company. I was really expecting them having a bit more respect towards anything like that. I have too much hope for people and obviously greed will always be greed.
It speaks VOLUMES about who they are and what is important to them. When someone tells you who they are, you should listen. Fatshark is screaming “we want your money and we don’t care” at the top of their lungs.
I am a bit flabbergasted at how many points of failure it got through to get to this point.
The concept was pitched and approved (and I know the pitch wouldn’t have been “it’ll be cool if we induce double/triple vision blurring and uncontrollable camera motion while charging a staff that can flash bright lights/effects”… right?)
An artist had to have made it and I assumed applied it to the game to see how it looks.
A programmer implemented it (camera shake, etc.).
A supervisor/manager looked at it and approved it.
A tester/QA ran the weapon because it was a change and reported how it looked and what effect it may have had with them.
If reported, then someone ignored the report or put it as lower priority despite the effect having actual physiologically effects on people.
Then it got pushed to live.
I too rarely get motion sickness but this staff made my eyes so, so tired just playing one game. Again, how did it get to this point?
And a company that cant apologize for anything and thinks they are above everyone else in what they do. They probably think in their mind, if you dont like it dont play it… and they are right.
I hate that i love the gameplay of this game. But its an awesome piece of chocolate enveloped in a massive pile of sh!t.
I really feel like fatshark should apologize to those of us that were affected by this. Given their history with being willing to accommodate gamers with disabilities in the past. I thought this would have been taken a little more seriously and the fact they still haven’t put a psa on the launcher warning people with vision problems of this is very disappointing.
It speaks VOLUMES about who they are and what is important to them. When someone tells you who they are, you should listen. Fatshark is screaming “we want your money and we don’t care” at the top of their lungs.
I hope this gets fixed asap but… what? How does changing the vfx (intentionally or not) = fatshark is greedy?
Its a new visual effect that they applied to the surge staff its absolutely horrendous and is hurting peoples eyes that don’t have any eye conditions.
This has got to be the worst release of a high profile game since Cyberpunk or Fallout 76. Both games that, ontop of releasing in awful states, caused literal physical harm to their player-base: Cyberpunk with its braindance seizure issues, and 76 with its collecter’s edition helmets that were filled with toxic mold.
I don’t have any photosensitive disorders or regularly get motion sickness and this new VFX is causing headaches, eye strain and nausea for me and many players. Just because it doesn’t affect you doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue.
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