Epilepsy, Photosensitivity and Accessibility Settings

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Technical Support
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Issue Description:

Several visual effects are extremely taxing on photosensitive individuals.

“Damage to Toughness” is the most obvious, being a bright white strobe light effect around the border of the screen. Things like muzzle flashes are tame by comparison.

I can remove the strobelight effect with “particles_capacity_multiplier = 0” in the config file, however this removes all particle effects whatsoever. As such, something needs to be done with a new accessibility option to reduce the intensity of the damage strobe light.

I have had two seizure auras in the past three days trying to play this title. This is extremely unusual, as no other game, not even Highfleet on Glitch High, is capable of causing me any problems. With virtually all other titles I have ever played in thirty years I have not had this much seizure causation, save from when a neurologist deliberately puts a strobe light in front of my eyes to scan my brain. That effect is precisely what you’ve put into your screen damage flash for hits to hardness, and it is constant, random and unavoidable. Its an intense effect for the average player, but for no small number of us its a kick in the groin.

Please correct this with either an intensity slider for the brightness/alpha of the screen overlays, changing the hit overlay to not be brilliant white on the ordinarily black maps, or allow the overlays to be disabled entirely. All of this is proposed as client-side solutions to not change other player’s experiences.

While I understand you have an epilepsy warning it is legal boilerplate and shouldn’t be the end of the conversation.

I am also not interested in hearing “don’t play video games as an epileptic lol” from anyone who isn’t an epileptic. As I said, this is the first title in years to cause a reaction, and it is almost certainly due to a handful of specific and wholly optional effects.

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Hi @Bourbon,

Thanks for the report, and sorry to hear this.

I’ve raised this in our database, and have passed this feedback on to the team for discussion.

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Thank you very much for that. The escapism of video games lets one overcome their physical limitations, and I appreciate you considering some toggle to remove this reminder of a limitation.

And to be totally clear, I want non-epileptics to still enjoy the full retina-scrambling experience. No need to change their fun on our account.

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FWIW I had a very bad reaction a couple of days ago from the excessive flashing/strobing, first time in over 30+ years of gaming.

I had severe nausea, dizziness and eyeballs went haywire; it knocked me on my arse for the rest of the day and some of the next morning.

I think it was mostly due to the power sword strobing in dark areas and made worse by psyker spell effects. I’ve seen others mention the power sword in discord mod requests to dampen the visual FX for it. Additionally I think it may be further exacerbated by using HDR (OLED) and properly calibrated brightness/contrast.

I had a smaller bout today as well, and just now on testing; it’s a very unpleasant experience and muted effects and elimination of strobing would be most welcome.

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@gpkgpk, sorry to hear that! :frowning: I’ve passed your feedback directly on to the team and given the ticket in our database regarding this a nudge.

Thank you for your detailed report!

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