Why Content Warning's Devs Are Apologizing For Viral Horror Game
Yet another new horror game has people freaking out online. "Content Warning" gives you and three other players the experience of becoming viral ghost hunters. You grab your gear, pick your face with an ASCII customizer, and descend into the mysterious depths of the Old World. Scares lurk around every corner, and it's your job to film them and upload your finds to SpöökTube for viral fame and fortune. Horror games have a tendency to catch on quickly, but even by those standards "Content Warning" is a smash success.
Partly thanks to being free at launch, "Content Warning" has seriously taken off, generating more than 6 million sales and reaching over 200,000 concurrent players in just a couple of days. Those aren't quite "Palworld" playerbase numbers, but they're wildly impressive nonetheless. The scares are a big part of the appeal, of course, but so are the post-exploration watch parties that friends engage in while hoping for their spook-tacular videos to take off.
Gamers are deeply amused by the genre-mashing antics of "Content Warning," but they also haven't been shy about pointing out the game's flaws. This is a brand new game from small indie developers, so it's not surprising that bugs are popping up, but the game's outrageous popularity has made its relative handful of flaws even more glaring. Now the developers are apologizing for some of the issues, hoping to address them before players move on from "Content Warning."
Content Warning's devs are on it
For the most part, the bugs plaguing "Content Warning" are exactly what you'd expect. There are a handful of minor annoyances that can really derail a run, but there are also some server issues that can shut down a gaming session altogether. That's undeniably annoying, but it's not very surprising for a successful indie game. Even the "Helldivers 2" devs ran into server issues after that game's sudden popularity, and that team had Sony backing it.
"Content Warning," on the other hand, was developed by just five people, and Landfall Publishing has never had a game with this large of an immediate playerbase on its plate. The good news is that the devs are aware of the issues, and they're moving to address them right now. On April 2, Landfall posted an update on Steam laying out the four key problems the team wants to address in the immediate future.
The devs highlighted voice chat and connection issues as top priorities, explaining that the team is also aware of issues with the in-game camera footage bugging out. Landfall explained, "A lot of these we have leads on already and are hoping to have some fixes for tomorrow morning." That was a pretty optimistic assessment, and though the devs definitely fixed some issues, there's plenty more to work on.
Players are pro bug spotters
With "Content Warning" becoming massively popular, fans are chiming in left and right to point out the bugs that they're running into, as well as to make requests for features they'd like to see added to the game next. For instance, some unfortunate gamers are running into an update issue that prevents them from signing into the game in the first place. Others are already looking to the future and hoping for more accessibility features that can bring new players into the game. Others have mentioned that a VR version would be deliciously terrifying.
Meanwhile, in a game that's all about filming spooky beings and surviving ghostly encounters with your friends, communication is key. No wonder fans have been immediately jumping on the devs to fix the game's various audio issues. One particular bug has been cutting players off from one another, to the point where no one can hear their teammates. This essentially breaks the game, and it's prompted Landfall Games to apologize for the inconvenience. In response to a player complaint about the audio problems, Landfall posted, "we are aware and are looking into it, sorry about that one – terrible bug!"
Landfall Publishing has been rapidly responding to all the comments flooding in online. For the time being, the devs are addressing the main bugs disrupting people's gameplay, but it sounds like the group plans to support "Content Warning" for quite some time. Fans can probably expect some of their wishlisted features to make it into the game somewhere down the road.