A report was released earlier today as one early reviewer for Cyberpunk 2077 noted a major problem. The short version is, the sometimes flashy and intense visuals in the game have a propensity to induce seizures, and other issues, for some gamers. Needless to say, but this is very bad. And it turns out CDPR agrees, as they should. The initial report from Gameinformer’s associate editor Liana Ruppert detailed having “one major seizure,” along with “several moments” of being on the brink of other episodes. And it’s a terrible thing to deal with. I sincerely doubt anyone wants to have to deal with these issues when it comes to leisure activities, and they shouldn’t have to.
The company has already responded to the report on Twitter, saying that they are “working on adding a separate warning” to the game. There is already one in the liner notes for the game’s physical versions, but it could definitely be more obvious. How many gamers do you know that read EULAs for games? If this news hadn’t broken though, we might hear about a rash of Cyberpunk 2077 seizures going off on launch day, which would be so much worse than it already is.
The obvious solution here is to patch in a new mode that bypasses these problematic scenes in some way. It would likely involve manipulating camera angles and effects being rendered in-engine, but it can be done. This could be a simple toggle in the options menu to turn on, with the game prompting a warning on first boot to let users know about it. There are certain scenes in the game that cause these issues thanks to rapidly flashing lights, and those would need a toggle of some kind to remove the lights to make them safe.
That seems to be the response of most advocacy groups dealing with this as well. UK charity organization Epilepsy Action spoke with Eurogamer and made it very clear, criticizing the oversight that led to this whole mess. “The developers at CD Projekt RED should consider how they can update the game to make it safer. A disclaimer warning at the beginning isn’t enough,” the organization said.
