In an update released in July 2021, scenes featuring the player harming or killing themselves were removed entirely, despite having an option of skipping them. The reason according to the developers was due to the scenes being considered sensitive for current times. In a blog post, the development team explained about the change that "considering the sensitive time we're living in, we can do better than that. You deserve better. All scenes alluding to self-harm are now completely removed from the game. These scenes have no place in Superhot Virtual Reality. We regret it took us so long."

The update immediately received backlash from the player base who considered the scenes integral to the game's story and called the move by the developers as "virtue signalling," In repose, the game's Steam page was review bombed with overwhelmingly negative ratings and reviews with Steam attempting to combat it.