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Void Interactive has confirmed the console port of its violent shooter, Ready or Not, has been changed "as absolutely required by our first party partners", including tweaks to dismemberment/gore, nudity, mistreatment of children, and "explicit representations of violence". And in some instances, these changes may be applied to the PC version, too.

In an update posted to Steam, the team said that after some changes, the game secured a PEGI 18 / USK 18 / ESRB M-rating, and was "fortunate enough [...] to pass certification for the launch on our first submission". Void was now "relieved" to be finished with the console launch certification process and says any changes made "remain faithful to the original tonality of the game".

Ready or Not - Weight of the badge | Console Release Date Trailer

Ready or Not – Console Reveal Trailer (PS5/Xbox Series X | S).Watch on YouTube

"Maintaining multiple versions of the game with different assets and system mechanics increases the likelihood of bugs to occur in future updates, and subsequent challenges keeping the game updated across multiple versions," the team explained, justifying why it's had to tweak the PC version, too. "Think lighting or optimisation issues, for example (or any number of unexpected bugs from maintaining different versions).

"If the in-game assets were not the same, it would make crossplay unusable; the game content must be equal or basically equal for multiplayer to work. Different versions of assets affects multiplayer replication, which is the ability for the server to understand what’s happening in-game and host players in the same lobby/server."

Player-induced dismemberment "still has a large presence" in the game, "but is a little more limited as to when it occurs", and you can't, for example, keep dismembering an enemy once it's dead. Tangentially, character art "involving torture were turned down slightly to be less over-the-top". The team has also had to "cover up" some characters "a bit more".

"Although we already make a substantial effort to present mistreatment against children in the game in a responsible way, we made slight thematic expansions of this philosophy in order to better meet certification standards," the team explained when it came to violence against children. "For example, the child on Twisted Nerve has had an animation change to be unconscious/sleeping, instead of the previously convulsive animation from before that had a violent appearance.

"The changes with the console version are small enough that most people here wouldn't notice if we didn't say anything, but we want to be transparent. It's largely just evidence and nudity that's altered, and the texture changes don't affect the PC version." In-game evidence of "illicit child stuff" has also been censored, but only in the console version.

Some fans have responded to the changes by review-bombing the game on Steam, citing "cowardly" "censorship".

Ready or Not will release for consoles on 15th July, 2025.

Void Interactive lost the publisher for Ready or Not days after it confirmed the game would include a school shooting mission. The game was released in early access on 17th December, but in a statement on Twitter shortly afterwards, Void Interactive said it had parted ways with publisher Team17.

Though no reasons were given at the time, the change came shortly after a developer responded to a Reddit post about including a school shooting with the statement: "You better believe it's gonna". Ready or Not was also briefly taken offline in 2022 following a trademark dispute.

Players have hit out at The Alters developer 11 Bit Studios after AI prompts were discovered in both subtitles and flavour text in the game, intimating routine use of large language models (LLMs) without disclosure.

Since January 2024, Valve has required games that use pre- or live-generated AI to divulge this as part of the Steam Distribution Agreement. This includes art, code, sound, and more that have been created with the help of AI tools. At the time of writing, The Alters has made no such disclosure.

In one example, an in-game screen that's presumably there to look all sci-fi-y and scientific begins with: "Sure, here's a revised version focusing purely on scientific and astronomical data".

Another commenter who'd played through with subtitles on Brazilian Portuguese noted "several times the subtitles go crazy", which was later backed up with a screenshot that evidenced it. The subtitle read: "Sure! The text translated to Brazilian Portuguese is: Every conversation two people can have, right? So we-"

"The game is using AI-generated content without a proper Steam Page disclaimer!" said another player on Steam. "This is absolutely unacceptable. 11 bit studios has been caught using AI in The Alters without ANY disclaimer on the Steam page.

"Steam requires developers to disclose AI use for a reason. We have the right to know what we're buying. If you're going to use AI to create content, be honest about it instead of trying to hide it."

Not all players have taken umbrage, however. "You realise this is tiny text on a background prop, and only exists as a graphic and not as something you're expected to actually read," someone replied. "In the past things like that could have Ipsum etc stuff on it, or random gibberish. This isn't even slightly an issue.

"You may have a point regarding the translations, if those were indeed AI generated. But to use this screenshot as an example of AI generated content is a joke."

Game localisation specialist Lucile Danilov, however, had a different take.

"Look, I love The Alters. It's brilliantly written, and I was planning on leaving it a glowing Steam review once I was done. But this is a disgrace. Seriously, leaving parts of an AI prompt in the lockit?! Talk about spitting in the face of your international audience!

"According to the OP, some parts of the PT-BR translation are also riddled with errors and inaccuracies, which is appalling considering how the whole game revolves around an intricate narrative."

Danilov posited that the mistake was either the work of a "careless translator taking shortcuts", or it was "done by someone on the dev/publisher side who couldn't be arsed sending last-minute missing lines for translation and decided to throw them in a random LLM without oversight".

Handong Ryu, who handled the Korean translation for the game, replied: "I was responsible for translating the vast majority of the Korean version of The Alters. Unfortunately, the same issue exists in the Korean version as well, which makes it more likely that the second scenario you mentioned is closer to the truth. While no AI prompt has been exposed, I can confirm that the same section of the Korean localisation shows clear signs of having been run through an LLM without proper editing.

"There has been significant backlash from the Korean gaming community, and it has been really disheartening to witness, especially since the criticism stems from a part of the game I had no control over."

At the time of writing, 11 Bit has not publicly addressed the allegations or responded to player comments. Earlier this week, Jurassic Park Evolution 3 removed generative AI for scientists' portraits in Jurassic World Evolution 3, "following some initial feedback".

"There's something startlingly unique about what 11 Bit Studios does in its games, and the moral quandaries it puts us in, and this clone story in The Alters is no exception," Bertie wrote in Eurogamer's The Alters review, awarding it 4 out of 5 stars.

"It takes us to the strange places I hoped it would, and prods and probes and makes me think about what I value in life. It's uneven at times, and some ideas feel underdeveloped, but then, I remember, this merging of ideas is new, and that's what I like so much about it."