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School Shooting Game Angers Steam Users, Developer 'Likely' Changing It
Earlier this week, a game called Active Shooter appeared on Steam. It'd be nothing more than another heap of hacked-together pre-purchased assets—or an "asset flip," as they're known on Steam—if not for its subject matter. It's about mass shootings.
The unreleased game's Steam store page describes it as a "dynamic S.W.A.T. simulator" in which you play as a shooter, a S.W.A.T. team member trying to neutralize them, or a civilian. Its trailer depicts a player running down school halls and through classrooms, indiscriminately murdering teachers until a S.W.A.T. team shows up.
Complaints about the game have been fierce, and yesterday the person behind the game said they'll probably remove the option to play as the mass shooter. Almost as soon as the game's store listing went up, Steam users took to the game's forums to voice their distaste.
The developer will send "press review" copies out on May 30.
The Hill mistakenly claimed that Active Shooter is "created by video game company Valve" (they have since corrected their article).
Recently, Valve made headlines when it demanded that developers remove "pornographic content" from visual novel games. Some developers/publishers have since received apologies and their games are under re-review.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Monday May 28 2018, @07:15AM (10 children)
Sure they do. They might not be entitled to be published by any specific publisher, but if they were to find a willing partner or do so themselves, it is well within their right to have their product reach the market.
Free speech is an ethical issue, not a legal issue. Our laws protect only a certain narrow subset of the wider issue, but they do not fully address it and indeed cannot fully address it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @08:39AM (9 children)
Please define "ethical" in the boundaries of capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:49AM (4 children)
That's entirely irrelevant. If people want more companies to act like SoylentNews and respect the principle of freedom of speech to a very high degree, they can speak up about it. The companies are not obligated to make such changes, but people can still criticize their actions. Why has this become so difficult to understand? 'I don't think X should do Y.' should not be met with 'But X has a legal right to do Y!' That is just a straw man.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @09:36AM (1 child)
Except that "But X has the legal right to do so" holds true, does it not?
Because it's not a single 'I think X shouldn't do Y' opinion, there a two groups of people with two irreconcilable opinions. The 'legal right' becomes relevant when it comes to X's choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @09:34PM
In the same way that 1 + 1 = 2 holds true, but bringing it up in a discussion like this would be entirely offtopic.
Not when people are trying to discuss the ethics of the company's actions and morons keep bringing up legal rights that were never in question to begin with.
It's like people - even people who are ordinarily very skeptical of the free market and corporations - become unable to discuss whether what the corporation is doing is right or not in situations like these. Why not just argue against your opponent's arguments? If you think the censorship is good and they don't, then argue that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @11:35AM (1 child)
> If people want more companies to act like SoylentNews
'nazi cesspit' and "autistic libertard manchild" are not high on most sane people's wishlist
note the 'man' in manchild.
Not a coincidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @09:57PM
But those nazis have the legal right to say those horrible things
Strange how that 'legal right' argument isn't seen as valid anywhere else.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by unauthorized on Monday May 28 2018, @10:26AM (3 children)
Ethics is completely orthogonal to economics. Communists and feudalists can have ethics just as readily as capitalists. Indeed, you don't necessarily need an economy to have an ethical framework, even in a society of truly self-sufficient people it is possible to have ethical standards. Likewise, a perfectly functional economy regardless of it's fundamental model has absolutely no need for ethics and can go just fine without them.
What you are asking me to do is nonsensical. There is no logical basis to define ethics in terms of capitalism, at least no more than defining it in any other arbitrarily chosen ideology.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @11:23AM (2 children)
The philosopher-on-duty is unfortunately absorbed by the obsession with alt-right, no interests of his "Ethics - a treaty on a blog" opus
Let's take the "economy of scientific publications" - plagiarism (e.g. theft) happens even if the scientists should be self-sufficient.
Heh. Show me a perfect functional economy without a base on trust (and I'll show you a terrible efficiency economy. Like the one proposed by our resident "Violently Imposed Monopoly - replace it by contacts" resident). Maybe you'll... mmm... trust more Bruce Schneier on Trust [schneier.com]?
Trust - how do you build that without ethics?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Monday May 28 2018, @04:15PM (1 child)
Hypothetically, you can take a number of people, force them to live in their own segregated areas through fancy-shmancy techno-magical brain implants which prevent any form of cooperation or willing transfer of anything economically valuable, and these people will still develop a certain set of ethical standards (eg not murdering, stealing, trespassing and so on).
Ethics is inevitable in any complex society - the threat of violence upon transgression can only take you so far. Other primates, dolphins, whales, elephants and other species with complex societies also have them, even if theirs are cruder and closer to their biologically wired imperatives than ours, and yet only humans have such a thing as economies.
Indeed, there are human societies today which still live as tribal hunter-gatherers and yet they too have ethical standards.
Slavery. It's very efficient, and there is certainly no reason for trust on either side.
Same way your dog does - habit. We are hardwired to come to trust things as we become accustomed to them, even to our deterrent (ergo drunk driving and poor data backup hygiene).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @04:38PM
Trust - perhaps if only there's a single owner and all the rest are slaves. Because otherwise the matter of trust persists between the slave owners.Efficiency - if it's very efficient, why did the civilized humanity got out of it?
"Ethics is completely orthogonal to economics" is bullshit - as any grossly simplified model of reality - and you know it.
Don't dig your heels in a futile attempt to win the debate, I'm not interested in debating any further.
Do yourself a flavor and think a bit about before declaring that ethics and economic relations between humans are totally independent dimensions - this what orthogonal means, the projection of one onto the other is zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford