Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man is one of the hottest and most well-received games of the year. However, it hit a minor bump in the eyes of some people who had claimed that the developer “downgraded” the game by removing some of the puddles shown in early demos. The studio has responded to the Spider-Man PS4 controversy in the game by patching in the ability for players to put as many puddles as they want in its Photo Mode.
UI Lead at Insomniac Gil Doron pointed this small detail out on Twitter. Players can hop into Photo Mode and hit the square button to go the stickers. There are two different puddles images in the miscellaneous tab that players can place all over their images as they please.
This is not the first time Insomniac has responded to these claims but it is the least serious one. In August, the studio pointed out on Twitter that “it was just a change in the puddle size” and “there’s no downgrade at all.” A handful of bad actors lashed out at Insomniac for allegedly downgrading the game, correlating fewer puddles with poorer visuals. Community Director James Stevenson also tweeted even stepped in at the time saying he “talked to the technical and engineering and art staff, and looked at the live code of this from the final build. There was NO DOWNGRADE.”
Other studios, such as CD Projekt Red, have faced this sort of heat before as well, albeit in different ways. While fans have a right to see an accurate portrayal of the game they might buy, games do change during development as the team optimizes and gets it ready to release. This is why some demos can look different from show to show. However, there are only a few exceptions where the changes are noticeably and drastically worse.
This Spider-Man PS4 update not only adds this tongue-in-cheek joke but also the highly requested New Game Plus mode as well as support for the upcoming DLC chapter and a new ultra hard difficulty setting.
