Video games love spiders but arachnophobes obviously don't, and we've seen an increasing number of studios attempting to find a comfortable middle ground - usually an adorable, blobby middle ground - for all involved in recent times. Enter developer Zeekerss, which has now taken its own delightfully literal approach to solving the ongoing spider problem in its smash-hit co-op horror Lethal Company.
Lethal Company - which has proven to be an unexpectedly huge success since launching into early access in October, remaining high on Steam's top-selling and most played charts - runs the gamut of horrors, pitting players against everything from ghost girls and mechanical bees to eyeless dogs and spring-loaded mannequins as they scavenge its moon bases.
But as of this week's Frosty Update, players will no longer be forced to recoil in horror as its scuttling bunker spiders do their rounds. In perhaps the simplest, most effective attempt yet at making a game less of an ordeal for those with an aversion to eight-legged creatures, Zeekerss has introduced an arachnophobia mode that swaps out their scuttling heft for the word "spider", comically overlaid where the critter in question should be.