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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 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.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 08 2019, @01:18AM
Oblig XKCD [xkcd.com]