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from the think-of-your-mother,-daughter,-or-sister dept.
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: 2) by zocalo on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:46PM (1 child)
Sick as this kind of thing is, I have to concede that it would have been a brilliant bit of trolling if that was the case and they'd pulled it off, so to speak.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @08:13PM
My understanding (looking around for the source) is that they didn't expect to get approved/greenlit for weeks to come (if at all). I don't think developers have control over how long the process takes so it would be difficult to time it just right in order to get an International Women's Day release. Or they would have to get approval some time in advance and then set the publish date.
In terms of coverage, they have made it onto BBC [bbc.com], Fortune [fortune.com], SCMP [scmp.com], and others.
It looks like some amount of effort has gone into the 3D modeling, although I'm not sure if there are motion sequences or just image renders.
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