Now, I’m all on the side of the first amendment. Teachers and parents who are calling for banning this game? Nope, terrible idea.
But at the same time, goddammit, Steam. You’re the source of more than 90% of the games I buy, and I want to keep patronizing you. You require games with porn to be censored for their release via Steam. It is bullshit to censor porn, but to distribute games that allow people to score points by murdering civilians as they flee during a simulation of a mass murder at a school.
Hoping, really hoping, Steam makes the right call on this one.
Edit: to forestall a possible objection, this is absolutely different from distributing games that allow you to play fantasy violence–this game is capitalizing off of modern trends in murder, and their demographic is the population most vulnerable this particular sort of murder. (I count myself in a slightly different demographic that’s also vulnerable to this type of murder). Have some goddamned sense here, Steam.
I’d be lying if I said never made doom wads resembling my highschool or places of work. It isn’t “begging” for more shootings. It was a sweet release of angst. I have never (yet) shot up a school or workplace for real.
There’s lots of stuff to unpack with that game. First, the process for Steam allowing games is a flaming dumpster fire. Their attitude toward nudity and sex is all over the place and seems far more lenient towards big studios than small or indie games. They would routinely allow games that were barely functional through the Greenlight process, and I’m not sure the replacement system is any better. Steam probably never knew that a potentially controversial game was getting on their store. The low level reviewer checked that the game was not blatantly broken, checked the box that the game was okay, and the game was put on the store.
And Steam has the right to put it up for sale. If they had a clue, they would have been more prepared to respond as to why they were okay with the game on their store. But they don’t have a clue. Steam has every right to reject the game. I think they should have rejected the game because I wouldn’t want to be associated with it. By their acceptance and now rejection of the game just shows that they have no clue how to manage what they sell, what their values are, and what games they will allow.
(Also, I remember playing school.wad in Doom, well before the Columbine shooting.)
Dunno, but I first heard about this game from a Snopes article and they had info that Steam removed all of Acid’s games. I can only see info about Active Shooter on Steam’s site using the Internet Archive.
I’m guessing it happened as soon as someone with that power heard about the controversy over at Steam. It’s definitely not worth the bad press to hang onto what looks like a crap-quality game.
Their reasoning is that the developer of Active Shooter is a troll and they want nothing to do with him. Their content policies are still a work in progress.
This stuff will continue to come up because Valve has basically say “Eh, fuck it” to any sort of quality control on their store. They’ve gone from in-house determinations of what games to sell, to the stupid and easily gamed “Greenlight” system to just throwing open the doors to anyone who has a hundred bucks. As a result, there’s piles of garbage getting added daily and some of that garbage is going to be stuff like this that maybe gets handled after the fact, if it causes enough uproar.
See, that was their mistake. They could have left the school shooting part in, but filled it with microtransaction loot boxes. The outrage over the loot boxes would have swamped the outrage over the school shooting.
Steam has yet again updated their policies and will just be allowing any title that’s not “illegal” or “outright trolling”.
Trolling is presumably games like (now re-titled) “GTAV”. Not “Grand Theft Auto V” but someone who made a shitty little game and called it “GTAV” in an obvious attempt to get a few confused people to buy it. He even used the same green “V” from the Rockstar game. Steam pulled it down and then it was back, now called “Not GTAV”.
I’m not sure what counts as illegal. Presumably games that distribute illegal material (certain types of pornography, etc) but I don’t know if making “Cartoon child rape sim” is illegal under US law or not. Pornography is a special circumstance anyway and I imagine “graphically realistic baby stomping simulator” is still welcome on Steam under the new rules. Heck, maybe even “African-American baby stomping simulator”; I don’t know how hate crime laws work in that regard.
Wah, wah, wah. Assuming they’re not just Acid with yet another name, they should know better than to use Steam for publishing a game with such homophobic appeal.
Steam is apparently working on a new policy. They don’t have all the details worked out, but it looks like they’re trying to let people filter what games they find in the store, so that only people looking for troll games will find troll games.