Devs of controversial police bodycam FPS insist it's not a scam, defend its unavoidable politics

gamesradar.com:

Last year, footage of a "bodycam-style game" from a French indie developer made waves (opens in new tab) for its realistic visuals and incredible animations. Now, that game has a title, a Steam page, and a whole lot of players insisting that it's fake.

The game is called Unrecord, and a new, even better-looking bit of footage has landed alongside its Steam page (opens in new tab). Billed as "an immersive and narrative experience," the game puts you in the shoes of a tactical police officer working to investigate several criminal cases. Much of the gameplay in the trailer seems to focus on chasing and shooting at fleeing suspects, though there are moments where you have to rapidly choose a dialog option in the middle of the action.

Whether any of this ends up being fun or engaging remains to be seen, but the game's hyperrealistic visuals have been impressing just about everyone - to the extent that a not-insubstantial number of players are calling it fake.

"There have been many doubts raised about the authenticity of the gameplay," the devs acknowledge in a new Steam blog (opens in new tab). "The game is developed on Unreal Engine 5, and the game footage is captured from an executable and played using a keyboard and mouse. It is not a VR game. In reality, it seems rather flattering to compare the graphics of Unrecord to reality, but fortunately, we know that a game first focuses on gameplay and universe on which we primarily concentrate."

Nothing in the footage looks light-years beyond what we see in other graphically impressive modern games, but the realistic animation really puts it over the top, and that seems to be the bit that's tripping everybody up. The game's Steam forums remain filled with threads full of