Attention Officers,

Welcome to 87th edition of our Ready or Not Development Briefing, June 27th, 2025!

The clock is ticking on the RoNsole release for July 15th, and our console players are already stacking up. We remain locked in on delivering the best console release we can with the accompanying free Los Sueños Stories update for PC.

Speaking of which, there are a variety of animation changes that have been made for SWAT. These new animations will continue to be tweaked as time goes on considering the vast amount added. Also in this briefing we will outline some limited changes that have been made to the game for console certification standards.

Note: These development briefings serve to keep you in the loop about parts of our ongoing support for Ready or Not, however the briefings do not encompass everything that we’re working on at a given moment. Please keep in mind that the content in our development briefings may still be a work in progress and subject to change.


SWAT Animation Changes

These new SWAT animation changes affecting both players and SWAT AI represents part of a large team undertaking by our Animation Department. First person animations for many SWAT actions like kicking doors and arrests have been modified. Third person animations for movement and item handling also received an overhaul, utilizing inverse kinematics and more motion capture data to modify our movement sets acrossed the board.

The videos below showcase some of the changes that have been made utilizing this new data, accompanied by some commentary by our Lead Technical Artist, Alex. The animations are shown from within our editor to allow the cleanest view of the animations themselves.

"We reworked all our animation graphs to utilize the latest technology available in UE5, initially everything was built with custom nodes and techniques during the UE4 era. We were happy to see that Epic heavily expanded the functionality and available tech such as distance matching to be available by default in the engine. We also benefited from reducing a ton of unecessary complexity by utilizing the anim node function binding where you can run your custom logic directly on the anim node, [in total we saw] a heavy reduction in clutter and big boost in performance"

"As for the more visual [rather than backend] changes, we integrated a system that randomizes the player locomotion. We recorded 5 different special forces actors in our last big mocap shoot, the goal was to introduce a more organic and natural look while trying to get away from the standard everyone looks and moves the same in video games. We completed the graph rework and we are now dedicated to polish and further improvements using latest cutting edge technology available."

"Given our new motion variance system we also made sure to capture a unique set for every item the player can hold, especially where its worth emphasizing the nuances [like with the shield]. We now have entire motion sets dedicated to items, grenades, shield, pistols and rifles. All of them were shot on the mocap stage with the actor holding the actual item to allow for the most detailed animations possible."

Video below: Third person animation changes for SWAT shield bearers.

Our team paid special attention to the shield animation set to keep the players head covered, and as much of the body possible concealed, especially when crouched. Since these new movesets are modular and dedicated specifically to the shield they will be much more easily tweaked if or when necessary. The same modular nature goes for the rest of our equipment movesets!


Console Rating Content Changes

Throughout this console port process we've done our utmost to only make changes when they are flagged as absolutely required by our first party partners, and any changes aim to remain faithful to the original tonality of the game, so there is no reason to be alarmed.

Our age rating as it stands for console is ESRB M-rating, PEGI 18, and USK 18 to give an idea. Still, there are other game content requirements that console platforms have in order to exist on their systems, and a portion of these changes will be visible on the PC version.

If a content change was just a texture swap, we were able to apply it to console only while keeping the PC version the same as before. However, if the change involved transforming an entire asset (like adding clothing to a character model) this was less feasible.

There are 2 main reasons that these limited asset changes may be visible on the PC version as well:

1) 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. Think lighting or optimization issues, for example (or any number of unexpected bugs from maintaining different versions).

2) 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.


Dismemberment (aka Gore)
Player-induced dismemberment still has a large presence in the game, but is a little more limited as to when it occurs: when alive enemies are shot they can undergo dismemberment, however once they are dead no further dismemberment occurs. (Note: The level of dismemberment itself when it occurs was not actually toned down). Ultimately, we consider this an okay compromise considering our gameplay design already dissuades use of lethal force anyway.

Image below: A single image showing how the dismemberment currently looks in our development build and will look for all platforms of the game post-console release, none of which has been toned down. A shotgun headshot, horrifying as ever.



Lastly, some character art involving torture were tuned down slightly to be less over-the-top. For example, the tortured police informant on Narcos is still missing fingers, eyes, and covered in fresh wounds and blood, but a little bit less so.


Nudity
Some instances of explicit nudity for a handful of civilians and one suspect (Gerard’s ghillie suit only scantily concealed himself) have been covered up a bit more.


Explicit Representations of Violence/Mistreatment against Children
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. 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.


Console Content Changes Conclusion
The texture changes on console are just small things that make the evidence in levels more like hints that connect with other evidence in rather than something practically screaming 'this is illicit child stuff happening!' However, the player can easilly connect the dots based on the other evidence in the level.

This is probably one of the more extreme examples from the Streamer level, left side is PC version of the game (and will remain as such), right side is console version of the game. There is still a bunch of other evidence in the room that connects to show what's going on.

Image below: a texture example from the mission '23 Megabytes Per Second' showing how the evidence appears and will continue to appear on the PC version of the game (left) compared to the console version of the game (right)


Conclusion
We are looking forward to our console launch and relieved to be fully finished with all of our console launch certification processes. We were fortunate enough as a team to pass our certification for the launch on our first submission. Certifying in such a manner is relatively rare in the industry, let alone for a team who has not went through this process together before, and we extend a massive thanks to our entire VOID team and all of our partners who helped make completing this process possible.

We hope you will enjoy the new weapons, animations, difficulty system, levels, and all other great content that Los Sueños Stories/console launch will offer next month. We maintain our focus to bringing this gritty tactical experience to the wider gaming audience true to its spirit.

This concludes our 87th development briefing, thank you for joining us. Be sure to fall in next time for more development news!

The latest name change for Max. He's still employing his most recent 'different dev and pub name for each new game he says he's working on' tactic. And is still chasing trends as always. It kinda seems like he is fusing together Last Whisper and Landfall Survival.

https://steamhost.cn/app/3721680/Shatterland/

Shouldn't you actually include their statement so it's not strictly an opinion piece?

I did not end up accepting that license. I chewed on it for a bit, but ultimately, I decided against it.

However, I did find information in this video to both be relevant and very interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mKnH5SR59A

It's BigFryTV - 'These devs are suing their own publisher over $250 Million Dispute'

The whole video is worth watching, but the specifically relevant part begins around 3:15.

https://steamhost.cn/app/1550190/PostApo_Builder/

This developer's Steam username is Maxwell which seems like an odd coincidence. And, in looking through the game's forum, it's clear the development skill is about the same. Although this dev doesn't even seem to know what is in his own game.

For some reason, they sent a license to my curator despite what happened with Last Whisper, lol. I'm tempted to claim the license, but then again, I really don't want to play a game I know ahead of time is gonna be crap.

@Mellow: Very cool. It's unfortunate that it has to be that way, but you gotta use Steam's loopholes to prevent Steam's policies from negatively affecting people unjustly.

@Obey the Fist!: Yeah. The 2k limit is super arbitrary and makes no sense. Crazy thing: when the curator program began, IIRC, the limit was 500 reviews, lol. My personal curator is not at any risk of reaching 2k reviews, but the other curator I typically post to has well exceeded 2k and we had to set up a second curator to function as a vault for our older reviews to account for the review limit.

Oh, and just a fun read:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/community_moderation

With regards to avoiding community bans, you don't need to own the game to curate it, and you can link this thread on said curation. So, if you curate the game(s) here and in any other groups where you have access to curation, and as mentioned, link this thread in the curation, it will get some views, and the developer is powerless to respond, much less try to punish you. It might also actually get more views than posting in the game(s) forum.

You can apply this philosophy to any scam dev reporting. Just create a thread here to report on it, curate the game(s) in question, and link the created thread in the curation. Won't have to deal with community bans due to posting in the sus game's forum, that way.

Originally posted by Occular Malice:

Playway is a junk publisher. I do know the developer Max and have spoken to him a few times back when his game first got released and asked some questions about the whole publishing deal. It's a crap deal as they gave him $10k or something for assets and development, but once it went on sale he had to pay that back (through the Steam revenue) plus interest (those fees you mentioned). At the last point I talked to him, he was just breaking even so sales would have been in the black for him, but I think Playway pulled the rug and demanded more "fees" and like you said, eventually shut it down. Yeah, stay away from Playway and be really careful with any agreements you get into. If it sounds too good to be true ("we'll give you $10k to make your game!") it usually is.

Playway functioning as a loan shark, more or less, does tie everything together quite a bit. I couldn't figure out what those fees were for since marketing isn't really something they do much of outside of contacting streamers and curators and giving them access to games.

Originally posted by Obey the Fist!:

I've seen a lot of garbage published by Playway SA and some of it looks legit (but just bad), and a lot of it looks like Unity/Unreal kitbashes and Digital Homicide style asset flips.

I never caught them using Obzor/Mipped reviews, though.

Perhaps this is a case of an asset flipper just flummoxing a somewhat genuine publisher.

Wasn't Maxim one of the many aliases used by Vadim/Mr Badim? The guy who used unpaid underaged labour to make some of his trashware?

Possibly, but this is definitely not the same dude.

But yeah, to me, this is a curious case of a sketchy dev and sketchy publisher crossing paths and trying to out-sketchy each other, lol.

I don't think Playway buys reviews however, so there is that at least. I think they prefer to just spam Steam with half-baked ideas and probably make a lot of their cash by taking all the first week or two-week sales before the devs start seeing any money, if they see any at all. Certainly, a lucky few have done well. But I think most don't.

https://steamhost.cn/app/2172320/Last_Whisper/


was making Last Whisper with RockGame S.A. as his publisher. According to him in many forum posts that have since been deleted, and also according to him in some of the videos he posted which haven't been deleted, Playway hired him to make this game. For those that don't know, any publisher with "S.A." in their name is in fact Playway.

Anyway, Playway sent a curator license for this game to one of my curators a while back, and I tried the game out. The deficiencies in this game were obvious immediately. I reported this to the dev via the game's forum. He initially responded in mocking fashion saying the version of the game I had wasn't the current version (it was) and to not question him, lol. Obviously, I did question him. Before and after this, he was deleting any forum posts that pointed out issues with the game. I did capture some of these and added them to the review I published where I also detailed step by step my experience with the game and the issues I encountered within minutes of opening it. Which started a vast back and forth. I removed some of his most offensive comments on my review as part of that back and forth but left a few things. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/id/robilar5500/recommended/2172320?snr=1_5_9__402

Anyway, some interesting things came out of that back and forth. For one, the fact that he always referenced Playway being his publisher rather than RockGame S.A., which was the impetus for my looking into Playway and finding out a bit about how they separate their business into multiple publishing companies and the way in which they handle the devs they sign to one of their subsidiaries.


You may or may not know, but Playway secures the rights to game ideas, opening Steam pages for games that aren't even in development yet. They typically have a long list of TBA games on Steam. The last half of a huge list that also contains tons of published games and demos. https://steamhost.cn/search/?term=playway

Maxim has basically conveyed things in his videos and posts, and what I surmise from really looking at them myself; how Playway operates, at least with their subsidiaries, is as follows. They find new or new-ish developers to make these TBA games for them. Not sure specifically where they find these people but find them they do. However, the developer is required to handle all costs of development on their own, and Playway also takes all the initial sales from said game to cover mysterious "publishing fees". Which leaves those devs who don't have instant success with their games high and dry. Playway will then offer to hire these devs to work on other projects they have underway to make some money to help cover the cost of development with their own game. Which coincidentally always release into early access. The Playway model for development it seems. Sound convoluted? It is. Some of their games do find a solid audience, but most don't.


I obviously left the review I wrote for Last Whisper up but mostly gave him a pass due on a personal level to his inexperience and the fact that this led to his signing a shoddy deal with Playway. At the time, he had another game listing under his own MxzStudio publishing name which was an idle clicker ala Banana, lol. Eventually, he changed that listing to be an extraction shooter which became Landfall Survival.

https://steamhost.cn/app/2438270/LandFall_Survival/

Recently, after having abandoned both Last Whisper and Landfall Survival, he announced that MxzStudio was shutting down and Last Whisper was being taken over by his publisher, 12Studio.

This is a link to the Landfall abandonment announcement he made, although he has since removed said announcement: https://steamhost.cn/news/app/2438270/view/541095635886015761?l=english

Problem is, 12Studio is in fact also MxzStudio, just operating under a different name. This is where Maxim starts attempting to hide his identity in an attempt to start over. Which on one hand is understadable, but on the other, since he relies on early access sales for the games he makes, which are never enough to continue development, what he really does is leave a trail of game corpses in his wake. And he is a trend chaser, which isn't ideal either.

I had already been aware of 12Studio though because he had opened another gamepage on Steam, this time for a Webfishing clone called Chatters Lake, which he initially had listed under MxzStudio but had switched to 12Studio several months prior to the Last Whisper announcement. This one: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/2172320/eventcomments/592897268795838491?snr=2_9_100000_

https://steamhost.cn/app/3349460/Chatters_Lake/

He edited this announcement after I outed him there, but I posted the original announcement in the comments. He did learn his lesson about deleting comments, so these days, he prefers to play the victim instead. Which is actually true inasmuch as Playway completely victimized him, but it's just part of his overall online persona now and has led him down a path where one lie leads to another with no real way out. I even gave him an easy out and an easy win in the Last Whisper announcement I linked above, but he declined to take it, as he was too used to trying to control the narrative while also digging himself deeper at that point.


Max is now using new publisher/developer names for Landfall Survival AND Chatters Lake in an attempt to hide his identity and undoubtedly all future projects, of which there definitely will be some as he chases trends, will employ this tactic. He has retained 12Studio for Last Whisper and apparently convinced Playway to give him the rights to that game. Now, for the asset flip centric members here, a quick glance at his games will reveal that they are pretty much 100% asset flips, with tweaks here and there.

So, I would encourage people to keep an eye on this dev. But also, and more importantly, I would really really encourage people to really keep an eye on Playway and all their "xxxxxx S.A." subsidiaries, because they've got some truly shady ♥♥♥♥ happening over there.

That is more or less the sum total of what information I have, and it may seem like a lot about nothing, but in reality, there are two separate shady things happening. One with Playway and one that is ultimately Max's ridiculous way of coping with things. Plus, the asset pack driven development itself of course. I think this technically fulfills the criterion for a couple discussion categories here, so I'm just putting it in General for now and we can move it as everyone sees fit.