VHS Beta Returns Soon!

After over three months of waiting, VHS aka Video Horror Society is officially making it back into the hands of the community. All the way back in February, I reported that VHS had closed their beta after a series of attacks on the game servers during the week of February 14th. While the defenses of the game’s servers have been significantly improved by the developers, the reason for the delay being so long is that they wanted to begin the process of transferring the closed beta from their own launcher to the Steam launcher. Due to this, they were unable to give the community a proper timeline as to when the game would return.

Now, the day has come! At 9:18 PM eastern standard time on May 26th, a Hellbent Games Discord user by the name of Sam Gee, posted a message that stated “Video Horror Society – The Return of the Beta.” With this text came a link to a developer note with the same name, which I will leave right here. With the game returning, there are quite a few changes and things to expect at first.

With the move to Steam, be a few days that the developers are going to use to send the keys out in waves to the players who had keys before the closing of the beta. As such, the developers ask for patience from all of those who are currently gluing their eyeballs to their emails.

Another tweak to the game that has come is a new logo for the game. The new logo fully spells out Video Horror Society, which is a change from the original that just had the abbreviation. This was mainly due to global trademark rights issues that came up with the abbreviated name. However, I can guarantee you that it is also very helpful when it comes to search engine optimization. The amount of times that I have looked up this game in order to show my friends and have been flooded with stories about Blockbusters and old movies is ridiculous. Regardless, it was nice to occasionally take a walk down memory lane!

Beyond these changes, the game has a whole bunch of technical changes in it. These range from terminology to the Movie System, Plagues, menus, gameplay, and general bug fixes. All of the changes are too numerous to quote here, there’s a lot to unpack. As such, I highly recommend looking at the link in the second paragraph to get the full list of what is coming. At the end of the bug fixes, there was a very important message that the developers put up about communication between themselves and the community.

They stated, “We’ve been seeing the messages about communication on the return of the beta. Given the plans to return to the beta this week, we wanted to hold off on providing any updates on the chance that we ran into any issues. Though, looking back, I would like to acknowledge that an update in the midterm would have helped ease anxiety between then and now. As always, we strive to be as transparent with the community as possible, and will continue to do so going forward.” This statement shows just how much the developers care about their community, which is becoming a rarer thing to find in the gaming industry these days.

So, are you excited to hop back into the fray? If you are, then I can’t wait to see you in the game. For those who don’t yet have access to the game, fear not! The developers are going to be bringing the game into Steam Early Access sometime soon. If you would like to read my previous reporting of the beta, make sure to click right here.