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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: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Monday May 28 2018, @02:21PM (2 children)
When Free Speech was written in to the US constitution, that consisted mostly of meeting in a public place and talking to a group of people face to face, and distributing hand printed writings. Although, even back then using a popular private meeting location or finding a publisher to print material would not have been guaranteed, but that was considered good enough.
Today, almost every form of communication requires a private service. The entire idea of talking face to face is completely foreign to most people. It is still easier than ever to print your own material, but personal printer ownership is on the decline, and distributing printed material is increasingly problematic.
Everything electronic requires multiple levels of services. The client hardware provider, the OS provider, the browser provider, each segment of wire or wireless, the ISP, the web host, the server hardware and OS providers, and more. In the case of software like this one, there has never been a legitimate way to install non-vendor approved software on most mobile devices, and we are slowly moving toward losing that on what were once "Personal Computers". Because it is all privately owned, in the electronic world, there is zero guarantee of Free Speech.
Add to that that many unpopular ideas are now lumped in to Orwellian concepts such as Hatespeech.
So yes, it is understandable that there would be outcry when modern private forums censor people. There are no reasonable, effective alternatives left.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @02:52PM
Build them. E.g. 7rmath4ro2of2a42.onion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by zimmer on Tuesday May 29 2018, @03:18AM
The right to free speech just means that the government can't gag you, hence the ruling that The Donald isn't allowed to Block twitter users, but he can Mute them.
You however can Block anyone you like, assuming you're not a representative of the government acting in your official capacity.
The technology or ownership doesn't enter into it.
Additionally: Hatespeech isn't an Orwellian concept, The Donald claiming he had the biggest inauguration crowd of all time despite obvious evidence to the contrary is Orwellian.