Tue, Feb 08, 2011 | 06:31 GMT

Disabled gamer asks for customizable controls in Dead Space 2, Visceral obliges

Dead Space 2′s garnered near-universal praise from all who’ve traversed its necromorph-infested halls, but – among all the cheers – one “boo” slipped through.

It was Gareth Garratt, a gamer with cerebral palsy.

Garratt recently purchased Dead Space 2, fully expecting to, you know, play it. Unfortunately, he quickly discovered that he couldn’t map the “walk forward” command to his mouse, which meant he couldn’t play by pushing the mouse with his chin – as per his custom setup.

Meanwhile, a petition asking game developers to make re-mappable controls the norm has quietly amassed nearly 25,000 signatures over the past few months.

The end result? Visceral’s scrambling faster than a necromorph with its head cut off (and all its other limbs still very much murdering you) to solve the problem once and for all.

“The Dead Space 2 team is aware of the issue that disabled players are having with Dead Space 2 PC. In fact a number of folks on our team are so passionate about getting this fix done that they are currently working hard to allow players to re-map key bindings to the mouse which should help disabled players enjoy the game,” the developer said in a statement to Joystiq.

“In addition to the key binding fix the patch will include other fixes for PC players. Thank you for taking up the cause for our disabled players and letting us know about this problem. Once the patch is fully tested we will announce a release date.”

A good deed from a great game developer… who proudly proclaimed that “your mom hates this.” The world is a weird place.

28 comments

#1

back_up
08/02/11, 6:35 am

“”Meanwhile, a petition asking game developers to make re-mappable controls the norm has quietly amassed nearly 25,000 signatures over the past few months.”"
statement proves PC gamers are whiners = fact
keep on crying what’s next whining in EA forums

#2

Dralen
08/02/11, 6:58 am

@1 Heartless much?

#3

Lee Morris
08/02/11, 7:42 am

A good deed from a great game developer… who proudly proclaimed that “your mom hates this.”

I’ll think you find that it was the publisher who proclaimed that. Developers make games and publishers sell games.

#4

nofear360
08/02/11, 8:44 am

Plus, it’s good PR. It’s all about business, whether you like it or not.

#5

Suikoden Fan
08/02/11, 9:32 am

@1 i take personal offense to that, are disabled gamers not allowed to play games on pc in your perfect world?

#6

DrDamn
08/02/11, 10:07 am

Re-mappable controls is something MS and Sony should be building in to minimum standards for console games to pass their internal testing – and also supporting with dev libraries to standardise and make easier for devs. They already cover a lot of things so why not this? Doesn’t help PC Gamers that much but I thought the vast majority of games already supported this sort of thing.

#7

Crysis
08/02/11, 10:18 am

@6, well it would have stopped everyone bitching about KZ2 controls. I do agree with that though.

#8

BloodyJoe
08/02/11, 10:24 am

and I ask for a Move-Patch, same for ME2!

#9

Gekidami
08/02/11, 10:30 am

I dont get why devs are moving away from mappable controls. You could do it in most games last gen but this gen its getting rarer. It really dosnt make much sense.

#10

ninjanutta
08/02/11, 10:40 am

@ your a fool,you deserves to step into them shoes and see how much you whine.dont forget it only takes a car crash or something and you will be disabled.

#11

ninjanutta
08/02/11, 10:42 am

@1 that was for.damn,we need an edit button on here.

#12

Filofax
08/02/11, 11:35 am

As Gekidami already said this used to be the norm at one point especially on the PC, but it’s nice to see devs responding so fast to gamers needs.

#13

Rosseu
08/02/11, 11:43 am

That’s sweet of Visceral :)

#14

roflpwned
08/02/11, 2:48 pm

With regard to comment no 1 by Back_Up, if you had any intelligence whatsoever you might have noticed that the petition was started by a CONSOLE GAMER for, surprisingly enough, CONSOLE GAMERS. How much of a fucking retard do you have to be to completely miss that and make a complete fucking arsehole of yourself with the kind of comment that a 14 year old, ill educated, over opinionated child would make? Obviously only you know the answer to that, enjoy your absolutely epic fail.

#15

back_up
08/02/11, 2:55 pm

@14
thank you for your introduction.We now get who are you

#16

FabioPal
08/02/11, 2:58 pm

@14 “do not feed the troll”, it’s just worse, leave him by himself ;)

#17

roflpwned
08/02/11, 2:58 pm

@ 15

Spoken like a true muppet, does your mommy know you’re out of your playpen?

#18

back_up
08/02/11, 3:04 pm

@17
do you even have mommy false muppet

#19

back_up
08/02/11, 3:05 pm

@16
learn to buy games instead of pirating

#20

roflpwned
08/02/11, 3:05 pm

@ 18

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

#21

freedoms_stain
08/02/11, 3:13 pm

@19 http://torrentfreak.com/images/torrents-top.jpg

Mathematically console gamers account for 41.7% of torrent game piracy (and rising).

Can you shut the fuck up now?

#22

FabioPal
08/02/11, 3:16 pm

Guys, seriously, just let him shout by himself. He’s looking for attention, just don’t give it to him ;)

#24

back_up
08/02/11, 3:20 pm

@22
http://pc.ign.com/articles/896/896367p1.html
EA was not happy with deadspace sales
Ea canned sports games for PC due to piracy
there are many

#25

FabioPal
08/02/11, 3:22 pm

@23 Exactly :p

#26

GwynbleiddiuM
08/02/11, 3:24 pm

I dunno why by for some reason there is too much Xbox in my PC version of DS2. I mean if I wanted to push ‘LB’ to run I’d have bought the shit on a Xbox 360 and if I wanted to hit ‘A’ for action button, at the very list I would have bought a freaking Xbox 360 controller, not a damn expensive Logitech G15. Why devs are getting stupid every day?

I’m not disabled and I don’t receive th treatment I’m entitled by default, make sure you guys add this to your list of changes cuz I hate when I play a game on my PC but I keep doubting if I’m sitting behind the right machine…

#27

NeoSquall
08/02/11, 6:41 pm

I signed and shared the petition because it’s a good deed.

GG to Visceral and their good will.

#28

Isaaclarke37
08/02/11, 7:27 pm

It’s great EA is working on it to get it fixed ASAP.
@#1 stop being a douche.

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