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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, Informative) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @09:54PM (4 children)
DM said "The actual policy: It's my printing press, I can print or not-print whatever the hell I want."
I said "People asked Steam to remove/reject it. It's not their marketplace, but apparently their noise had an effect."
The point is that Steam isn't merely picking and choosing what it wants to publish using a set of criteria, even if some of them are subjective (such as no "troll games"). It is reacting to outside pressure and bad press.
They can do that, but it is inconsistent with the policy they set forth in September. They have bent the knee and admitted that they will go where the wind blows. Even Rape Day detractors are unsatisfied with this approach [kotaku.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 08 2019, @04:27AM
So? Welcome to the real world. You want to be a company that does business in the real world, you need to choose how to respond to the public. That IS making choices about criteria for publishing: perhaps very savvy choices.
Or maybe you're right, and maybe they'll alienate customers who wish they had a more "first principles" approach, and maybe that's worse in the long term.
It is what it is: a corporate decision that obviously weighed perception of different potential actions. Any company that completely ignores public perception of its actions -- even if it's claiming to operate on some superior moral high ground -- is likely not going to last long. Maybe this is some exception, but I really doubt it.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 08 2019, @04:42AM (1 child)
And by the way, I read your link and agree with you about the wording of the statement from Valve -- it's vague. But also, I think, perfectly realistic for a business acting in the real world.
Don't like it? Don't support them. And keep complaining about them. But don't try to pretend this sort of business decision is somehow improper because it was pragmatically influenced by complaints. That's what businesses do. Now you get your turn to complain... I just think "this decision was made wrong because it responded to public pressure" is a particularly strong complaint against them.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 08 2019, @04:43AM
Sorry: missed the NOT in the last sentence.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday March 08 2019, @08:25AM
Of course they are. It's just that one of their criteria is how they expect it to affect their public image. Evaluation of people's reactions of course is part of determining that.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.