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Valve says it won't publish game about raping women, after 'significant discussion'
Valve has at last responded to a mounting controversy concerning an indie game designed entirely around the violent sexual assault of women. The statement, posted to the Steam Blog earlier today, makes clear that Valve will in fact not distribute the visual novel, which was called Rape Day and scheduled for release in April through the company's Steam Direct distribution channel. The declaration marks a quizzical few days of silence from the video game developer and marketplace owner, which has taken varying, occasionally radical stances to moderation on Steam in the past few years.
In a policy change announced last year, Valve said it would let basically anything onto the platform so long as it was not illegal or very obviously trolling to illicit negative reactions from the general public. So far, the only category to meet that definition included visual novels and other games featuring the sexual exploitation of children, which Valve banned last December. In this case, Valve says Rape Day posed "unknown costs and risks," without clarifying which rule it broke.
Developer's website. Also at Ars Technica, Business Insider, and Kotaku.
Previously: "Active Shooter" Game on Steam Sparks Uproar
Valve Still Lives in the Waking Nightmare of Web 2.0
Valve Attempts to Define "Troll Games" in Order to Ban Them on Steam
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday March 07 2019, @05:26PM (26 children)
I'm inclined to agree with you.
And then I look at all the incredibly popular AAA games out there that are explicitly about murdering people, and wonder exactly what our priorities really are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 07 2019, @05:28PM (3 children)
Our priorities are American and fucked up. But we deal with the world we live in, not the one we want.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @05:42PM (2 children)
We deal with the world we live in, which currently includes murder simulators that glorify war in ways that are convenient to both of the capitalist parties. The parts of war that those simulators don't include are permanent handicaps, physical (limbs blown off) and emotional (PTSD), lost time on deployment putting one's life on the line to protect the profits of a small elite that won't even fund one's healthcare when one returns a shell of a man.
Our murder simulators don't include rape, which is something that happens in war. So they are incomplete war simulators.
From that standpoint, why should we not have rape simulators as well as murder simulators? Do you honestly think that we can magically sweep certain violence like rape under the rug while glorifying only violence that is directly useful to the capitalist class?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:07PM
Hey now, don't go thinking rape isn't useful - along with pillage, it's traditionally been one of the primary ways of paying soldiers in the field. Works great - lets your victims pay your soldiers instead of having to do it yourself.
And considering how little effort is made to prevent either today, it's still considered at least an acceptable form of combat bonus by those calling the shots.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:20PM
You need glorification of war, because otherwise it's pretty hard to get people to sign up to get shot.
Glorifying rape in your war simulator could help recruit some people ... and harm recruiting others you need.
Anyway, you can't have explicit stuff in a US mass-murder-legit-cause-bad-guys-sim targeted at teens
Headshot good. Nipple shots bad.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 07 2019, @05:40PM (21 children)
Priorities? Movie ratings consider sex worse than violence. Murder gets only an R, sex gets the triple X.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:53PM (18 children)
Movie ratings consider sex worse than violence.
Well the discussion is about rape, which is both.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:23PM (13 children)
Almost nobody believes that rape is a worse crime than murder, though.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @09:00PM (4 children)
Really? I must be one of those "weirdos" that does. Maybe ask the rape survivors that have PTSD or worse for rest of their lives.
https://www.apnews.com/5085e970462c4a5aa12cb5dab86127ae [apnews.com]
Oh, more weirdos... Only sane takyon to tell them how they are better off instead?
(Score: 1, Troll) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @09:09PM (3 children)
Whatever you say, Mr. Better Off Dead.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @10:54PM (2 children)
Hmm, well some survivors actually find living such a burden that they slowly degrade and take their own lives. Would you argue that survival was better than a quick death if survival just meant more suffering until death anyway? Or would you sweep that under the rug as "they were weak" or "needed therapy"?
I tend to agree with your assessment, rape is not as bad as murder, at least surviving the attack means a very possible better future. Death is just done, that person was denied the simple chance at life.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @11:17PM (1 child)
Yes, I am thinking along the same lines. The victim may commit suicide and that's a "choice", although there could be an argument about a lack of free will, ensuing mental illness, etc. Murder removes any possibility of the victim attempting to repair their life. Many people have experienced horrible things and managed to find happiness later. But people die when they are killed.
I consider death that you didn't choose worse than any amount of suffering. I also don't think that quantifying suffering is very useful (it just leads to pointless comparisons and what-ifs). As far as therapy is concerned, there is a possibility of removing memories from the human brain (think DARPA technology/chemicals [soylentnews.org], not a bottle of alcohol). That might take decades to become reliable and commonplace, but that's a short amount of time compared to how long humans have been around.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @01:18AM
Oblig XKCD [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 07 2019, @10:32PM (7 children)
That is debateable. Given that rape is more about violence than it is about sex, and given how personal an attack rape is, some women might prefer to have died. That woman who was gang raped in India, and eventually did die, would almost certainly have preferred to be shot to death. Hers is not the only horror story I've ever read.
If you need to refresh your memory, the Guardian has an article about Jyoti - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/01/indias-daughter-documentary-rape-delhi-women-indian-men-attitudes [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @11:01PM (6 children)
I think you know what "eviscerated" means.
In other words, she was raped and then murdered/slaughtered (dying directly of injuries from the attack).
A rape alone isn't likely to cause someone to become eviscerated [wikipedia.org], especially if there are up to 6 people restraining the victim. Beating someone repeatedly with a rusty iron implement can, though.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 07 2019, @11:18PM (5 children)
In this case, she was raped repeatedly by all five men, which apparently caused some internal injury. As a finale, she was raped with a piece of pipe. She wasn't "eviscerated" in the sense that she was gutted (think deer hunting), but the pipe was forced into her vagina, and forcefully manipulated to cause as much pain as possible. The woman was brutally tortured with that pipe, causing a lot of internal damage, internal bleeding, and infection. It took a month for her to die. In comparison, it would have been a blessing if the sons of bitches had used a sharp knife and gutted her straight out.
IMO, the only fitting punishment would be to pipe-rape all five of the men who participated. Use a nice rusty, pitted, jagged pipe, be careful not to actually kill them, then throw their asses into a rain gutter.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @11:30PM (4 children)
Article says she was transferred to a hospital in Singapore 11 days after the attack, and died 2 days later.
Rape isn't a form of murder. People can be raped without significant injury, especially if alcohol and other drugs were involved. Or if you have 6 likely physically stronger men pinning down the victim. Remove the piece of iron and sheer brutality from the equation, and she may have lived. But her attackers committed a crime beyond rape. In fact, they were planning to off her right then and there by driving the bus over her (i.e. not just leaving her with critical but potentially survivable injuries), but she was pulled away before that could happen.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 07 2019, @11:55PM (3 children)
I don't see two crimes here. They didn't commit a simple rape, then cause the woman's death as a separate act. It was all one act, with a pretty simple theme: to humiliate, denigrate, and debase a woman, in the process causing as much torturous pain as possible, and ultimately her death. Rape is almost always about violence, and violence taken far enough is indeed murder.
Yes, people can be raped without being injured. (Here, feminists do themselves a disservice, since you mention alcohol. The chick who goes out, gets drunk, then goes home with a guy has not been "raped" just because she regrets it the next morning.) Any injury, and the degree of injury, is entirely dependent on the rapist's need to "punish" the victim. Rape is all about violence, and the imposition of a man's will on his victim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @12:58AM (2 children)
At first I thought you were just another clueless feminist claiming that rape was never about sex. But really, you are redefining rape as violent assault in the genital region.
So if that is your new definition of rape, what do you call forced non-consensual sex?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 08 2019, @01:12AM (1 child)
"forced non-consensual sex". What do you call the use of force, if not violence? You seem to misunderstand me. The degree of force and violence is what separates a "simple" rape, from a barbaric assault.
No, I'm not a feminist. Some of those whackos go so far as to define ALL sexual relations as violent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @03:56AM
I would say that rape is almost always about sex, and is carried out by people who have no consideration of the other's agency. Whether that is sociopathic criminals or desensitized soldiers in wartime, the vast majority of rape basically comes down to "I want to fuck and I don't care what you want".
The feminist argument that it is always about the subjugation of women is ideological bullshit. It is about the basic male desire to stick their dicks in things coupled with a lack of empathy. The psycho who carves up women to prove his superiority is a small minority of rape despite the media propaganda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:36PM (2 children)
Thinking rape has anything to do with sex is like thinking murder has anything to do with hand/eye co-ordination.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @11:27PM
Rape is having sex with someone without their consent. Totally unrelated to sex, though.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @11:38PM
If rape had nothing to do with sex, then it wouldn't be rape.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 07 2019, @08:15PM
And yet, if there are no explicit visuals, a rape earns a movie only an R rating. For instance, High Plains Drifter.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday March 08 2019, @03:55AM
It's the reverse in Quebec. Depicted violence is worse than depicted sex.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @03:58PM
no, sex is X. triple X has activity that includes non-procreative benefit; that is, not what God intended as per how the laws are written.
In the US, some states still have it on the books that oral/anal/anything else is illegal because it doesn't offer the chance to provide more souls to their creators.
Such dubious representation in obscene media had to be marked with THREE "X" symbols, because they really struck out and need to be labeled as such as a punishment. But the reality is, you did not realize that there is more than just X and why that is so. Even the X itself is supposed to make it seem bad or negative, so three of them in a row must really make a young lady blush and feel guilty.