Ready or Not, the tactical, first-person shooter that entered Early Access in 2021, is back on Steam after a takedown request was issued concerning trademark infringement.
As reported by NME, the issue was related to a level that depicted a mass shooting at a nightclub and one that was released on the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting. The nightclub in Ready or Not was called Prysm.
Ready or Not developer VOID Interactive announced that its game was back on Steam earlier today, June 18, saying it was “very sorry about this downtime and hope it was not too inconvenient.”
— VOID Interactive (@VOIDInteractive) June 18, 2022
This apology arrives after it addressed rumors surrounding “the takedown of Ready or Not and its associated pages on Steam that occurred on Thursday, June 16th.”
“A takedown request was issued via Steam concerning a suggested trademark infringement in our recent Night Club map that was shared as part of our most recent Steam update,” VOID Interactive wrote. “We take IP concerns very seriously, and in a show of good faith, we have decided to remove the subject materials and any reference to them from Ready or Not and from any of our social media or other publications.
“Ready or Not will return to the Steam store once we complete the changes. We have also removed the AI update video from our YouTube channel and from our Steam Store page, and anticipate that these will be restored after an editing process is completed.”
VOID has not addressed the controversy around it releasing the map on the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, but fans on Twitter have mentioned the takedown was not specifically linked to that and instead was due to the name being similar to a nightclub chain in the UK.
This isn’t the first controversial moment for Ready or Not, as VOID Interactive parted ways with publisher Team17 one day after the developer shared it would have a school shooting level.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
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