Did the Devs remove these effects?

[Rhym3z]

Hi guys first time here.

I noticed something interesting yesterday on an old gameplay video.

On the developers video https://youtu.be/B_FOmhIYFyk during ship combat around 2:23, when the ships fire, you can see bright muzzle flashes from the firing ship and also hit effects on the recipient.
On my game I don't have those at all. It's really weird seeing beams just appear from thin air and no effects happen when the beams (or any weapon) hit the enemy.

Is this something that was removed later on in development or is it a graphics setting I'm not aware of (as far as I know everything is maxed out). Or perhaps a bug?
It's quite annoying knowing my game doesn't look as good as a dev video 3 years ago does.