Cyberpunk 2077 is adding in-game epilepsy warnings after it was found to contain photosensitive seizure triggers

• CD Projekt Red, the games publisher behind the hotly anticipated "Cyberpunk 2077," announced Tuesday it would add epilepsy warnings into the game.
• This comes after a journalist found numerous potential photosensitive seizure triggers in the game, including one feature that induced a major seizure.
• CD Projekt Red said its development team is also working on a "more permanent solution."

The creators of "Cyberpunk 2077" are working to make its game more accessible for epileptic players.

The game's publisher CD Projekt Red issued a statement on Tuesday - two days before release - saying it would put warnings in the game about potential photosensitive seizure triggers.

This followed a report by Game Informer editor Liana Ruppert, who experienced a seizure while playing the game and wrote a guide for players on which parts of it could induce seizures.

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CD Projekt Red also said its development team was looking into a "more permanent solution." It did not say what this solution might look like, but said it would be "implementing it as soon as possible." A CD Projekt Red spokesperson did not give further detail on what this "more permanent solution" could involve when contacted by Business Insider.

—Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) December 8, 2020

"Thank you so much for listening! I'm so proud of how far accessibility has come and while there's more work to do, it takes moves like this to make them happen," Ruppert said in a reply to CD Projekt Red's announcement.

In her article, Ruppert said she'd started playing "Cyberpunk 2077" with an expectation of at least some triggers, as the game has a lot of bright, garish lights.

She identified a collection of potential triggers, but one feature of in particular induced a major seizure.

The feature is called "Braindance," when the player connects to what is essentially a VR version of someone else's memories.

Ruppert said different elements of the these sequences were triggers, but most strikingly, when the character puts on the headset that starts the braindance, it shows a rapid succession of blinking red and white LEDs. Ruppert noted the device closely resembled a real-life machine used by doctors to test whether a patient might be epileptic by inducing a seizure.

"If not modeled off of the IRL design, it's a very spot-on coincidence," she said, and advised epileptic players to avoid the braindance feature altogether.

The end-user license agreement for "Cyberpunk 2077" does already contain a photosensitive epilepsy warning, but it appears as part of a 6,500-word document and does not address specific parts of the game that could be higher-risk, per the Verge.

CD Projekt Red's spokesperson told Business Insider the company is aware customers often skim through end-user license agreements, and so the company had made a "more digestible" version. They linked to this page, which includes the proper legal document accompanied by brief summaries of the individual clauses, written in the lingo of the "Cyberpunk 2077" game characters.

The summary for the seizure warning reads: "If you or someone you live with suffers from an epileptic condition, talk to your doctor before jackin' into Cyberpunk 2077."

The spokesperson added that CD Projekt Red will put out a post on social media specifically warning players about the braindance element of the game.

The hotly anticipated game is due to be released on Thursday, December 10. It was originally supposed to launch in April, but has had its release date pushed back multiple times.

For advice on how to reduce the risk of photosensitive seizures while playing video games, the Epilepsy Foundation has some tips here.