I just spent a very entertaining 15 minutes or so over on the GOG forum, reading comments in response to the announcement that there was now a Safe Mode for Soma. I am going to copy and paste a sampling of comments here, because I find them quite interesting:
Overall, there's nothing wrong with giving people the option / flexibility as long as not enabling it doesn't take anything away from those who don't want it. People need to be a little more flexible in forcing "single behavior games" as some games (and gamers) are a little more complicated than that and even the same person playing the same game can re-play it differently based on mood ("I want a serious challenge" vs "I want to relax and wind down for the evening").
Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?
And then we have the detractors' reactions, laced heavily with sarcasm:
Could someone please mod all of the gaps and pitfalls out of Super Mario? Those are scary and pretty dangerous. Also, all racing games should officially feature a bicycle mode. Cars are so noisy and bad for the environment.
Exactly and in all those FPS all these enemies shooting at you are really unsettling. Can't we have a friendship mode in DOOM (and all others), where the enemies just throw flowers at you?
And then there were the comments against the detractors:
"Mature" is the one thing you're certainly not right now. Why be so insulting and condescending? It's just a game. I personally have no interest in SOMA either way, but there might very well be people much smarter and more "mature" than either of us, who just want to relax and play the game for it's story and exploration without having to worry about a "game over" screen. It's simply idiotic and childish to make such generalising and insulting remarks about people based on their prefered mode in a computer game.
And lastly, there were those comments that were downright amusing:
Hello, my name is Toughy McToughguy and my fragile masculinity is inextricably bound to whether or not I can complete horror games. I, being the manly man that I am, have completed this game without any modding. This monumental achievement (which only hundreds of thousands of other people have achieved) has reaffirmed my manliness to myself. When I hear that others might be able to complete the game without the requisite manliness such as I possess, it takes something special away from me. Now I could just ignore it because it's a game I finished two years ago and I probably never intended to play it again in the foreseeable future, but this is a personal slight against my manhood.
P.S. If someone is having fun in ways I don't like, then they're not really having fun. So cut that out and stop having fun.