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The Balancing Hypnosis: Why Fans Are Right To Question SCI’s Messaging
For months, the community has heard the same line repeated over and over from Ash Habib and Steel City Interactive staff. They frame every design choice as a matter of “balancing.” They repeat the word so often that it feels less like an explanation and more like a script meant to condition fans into lowering their expectations.
But what exactly are they balancing?
And why is balancing being used as a shield to justify a more hybrid or arcade direction without giving players any control over the experience?
This is where the pushback begins.
1. Balancing Is Becoming a Catch-All Excuse
When a studio cannot explain missing mechanics, flawed systems, or removed features, they often lean on “balancing.”
In Undisputed, it has become a mantra.
No referee. Balancing.
No clinching. Balancing.
All boxers with the same footwork freedom. Balancing.
Arcade punch windows. Balancing.
High stamina spam gameplay. Balancing.
Lack of sim depth. Balancing.
Fans are not imagining this pattern. The word is used whenever the studio wants to avoid accountability for design decisions that do not represent real boxing.
2. Balancing Without Options Is Not Balancing. It Is Control.
If a studio genuinely wants to balance a realistic, hybrid, and arcade experience, it gives players a choice.
Realistic and authentic mode.
Hybrid mode.
Arcade mode.
All three can coexist.
Other sports genres do this every year.
SCI has insisted on a one-size-fits-all approach. The moment they decided the game should only play “the way it is intended to be played,” they removed the freedom that is essential for a sports title.
Balancing only becomes a problem when it eliminates choice.
3. Hybrid Design Without Transparency Is Misdirection
If the studio wants a hybrid direction, that is their right.
But call it what it is.
Do not tell the community that prior versions were simulations.
Do not tell creators they are “playing the game wrong” for attempting realistic pacing.
Do not insist that realism is impossible when other games with far fewer resources achieved it years ago.
Do not imply that fans asking for authentic boxing are unreasonable.
The community remembers what the ESBC Alpha Gameplay First Look video showed.
It promised movement, rhythm, pacing, footwork, stamina, risk and reward, and defensive depth.
That trailer built this fanbase.
Not a hybrid arcade direction.
4. The Hypnosis Effect: Repetition to Dull Expectations
Repeating “balancing” nonstop is not communication. It is conditioning.
Say it enough times, and casual fans repeat it.
Say it enough, and content creators repeat it.
Say it enough, and the expectation for true boxing realism lowers.
It is a marketing tactic.
Not a development roadmap.
Every patch that simplifies mechanics, slows pacing, or removes boxing IQ tools is defended using the same word. Meanwhile, none of the missing authentic systems are restored.
This is how a game that was marketed as realistic slowly transforms into a hybrid arcade title without the community realizing it until it is too late.
5. Boxing Fans Are Not Falling For It
The sport has real mechanics.
Real stamina arcs.
Real footwork levels.
Real defensive layers.
Real tendencies.
Real identity and authenticity.
Gamers are not asking for magic.
They are asking for what was advertised.
When a studio tells fans that realism cannot be balanced, they are either uninformed or protecting a rushed design.
Every successful sports sim proves the opposite.
6. The Real Question Fans Are Asking
Why is SCI pushing a hybrid direction without offering options?
Why is balancing being used to justify every missing or removed mechanic?
Why is the studio repeating the same line to fans as if the community must be convinced rather than informed?
Fans are not hypnotized.
Fans are observant.
They see the pivot.
They hear the contradictions.
They feel the loss of vision.
And they are no longer accepting “balancing” as an answer.
Balancing...
Balancing is not the problem.
Balancing without options, transparency, communication, and respect for the sport is the problem.
If Undisputed wants to be a hybrid game, they should say that clearly.
If they still claim to be building a realistic sim, then their design decisions must reflect that.
At this point, the community is pushing back because the repetition of “balancing” no longer feels like development insight. It feels like misdirection.
Fans deserve clarity.
Fans deserve choice.
Boxing deserves representation.
No amount of balancing talk will change that.
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