Superhot: Mind Control Delete’s controversial ending has been patched

But the spirit is still there

Superhot: Mind Control Delete came out a few weeks ago, and I’ve had a blast working through it.

Though I must admit, part of my enthusiasm to finish the game was lit by the fires of curiosity: as numerous discussion boards for Mind Control Delete (from Reddit to the game’s Steam page) were ablaze with controversy surrounding the ending.

While the sentiment remains following a recent patch, the ending requirements are a bit more lenient now: at least on PC.

Light spoilers below

In short, after finishing the final set of levels in Mind Control Delete, the player is asked to wait eight hours for the game to “reboot itself” before you can play it again. On PC this timer has been reduced to two and a half hours via a patch, but the timer remains at the original setting on consoles (for now). You can take a look at an Xbox One screenshot of the timer from my playthrough below.

Eurogamer had the chance to speak to the game’s co-director, Marcin Surma, who explained the situation a bit. Originally the timer was going to be 24 hours (!), but they shortened it to eight; and now, 2.5. Surma states: “After all, we don’t want to punish the players, we want players to feel both the significance of what they themselves achieved during the ending, and to have a moment to be part of this experience more as performing along than just playing.”

While the theme of Superhot is supposed to be up to interpretation, Surma spoils things a bit, noting: “We try to leave our games free for interpretation to the players and wouldn’t like to push our own narrative. It’s much more powerful for someone to filter the game through the lenses of their own experiences. That said, in my view the original Superhot is more about addiction and Mind Control Delete is about greed and over-attachment.” The ending strongly veers toward his view.

This whole “issue” is wild to me. Like our own Anthony Marzano (who reviewed it), I never thought of the ending as a “problem.” It’s not like the game locks you out of everything you own on whatever platform you’re playing Mind Control Delete on, and my immediate thought was “I’ll just leave this on overnight.” The argument of “you can’t play what you paid for” is a bit much, especially since you can use a quick app fix on PC to instantly speed up the timer (which is partly why the Superhot Team introduced a shorter requirement in the aforementioned patch).

It’s nice to see a developer, any developer, taking a risk with something unique like this. If you’re that mad, leave it on overnight, go to sleep and play it when you wake up. Or, with this warning in mind, don’t finish it until you’re ready to start that process!

The new Superhot forces you to wait hours after the ending before you can play again [Eurogamer]