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.
Related Stories
What makes a "troll game"? Valve tries for a Steam-wide definition
Some of Valve's definitions of trolling seem relatively clear-cut. Most everyone would agree that Steam should remove developers that are "trying to scam folks out of their Steam inventory items" or those "looking for a way to generate a small amount of money off Steam through a series of schemes that revolve around how we let developers use Steam keys," for instance.
There's a little more subjectivity in determining if a Steam title is what Valve calls "a game shaped object." The company defines this category as "a crudely made piece of software that technically and just barely passes our bar as a functioning video game but isn't what 99.9% of folks would say is 'good.'" There may be some edge cases where a game some people consider "broken" is one that others consider brilliantly deconstructed "art." For the most part, though, a game that only 1 in 1,000 people would consider playable sets a good rule-of-thumb threshold for what deserves removal from Steam.
Where the "troll game" determination begins to get squishy is in games and developers that Valve says are "just trying to incite and sow discord." This is similar to the justification Valve used in June to remove Active Shooter, an unreleased game that planned to let players take on the role of a school shooter or the SWAT team trying to stop him. [...] The Active Shooter case gets into the one thing that Valve says unites all of these different troll developers: their malign motives. A troll developer is one that isn't "actually interested in good faith efforts to make and sell games to you or anyone," the company writes. While good-faith developer efforts can obviously lead to "crude or lower quality games" on Steam, Valve says that "it really does seem like bad games are made by bad people." And it's those bad games from bad people that Valve doesn't want on Steam.
Pool's closed, no AIDS Simulator for you.
Also at Motherboard.
Previously: "Active Shooter" Game on Steam Sparks Uproar
Valve Still Lives in the Waking Nightmare of Web 2.0
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: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Monday May 28 2018, @02:15AM (1 child)
I downloaded the free version of that game, it sucked. Don't remember why, but I didn't even finish the free part, even while reveling in the whole Stick It To The Man vibe.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @02:58AM
I pirated that game and Habib was chasing me the whole time screaming "Stop! You are stealing!" until I turned around and shot a quart of jizz in his face then he stopped and licked off my jizz like a contented cat.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @02:37AM (27 children)
Let me see who's side you are:
- the game author has the right to publish the game without any censorship pressure
- the gamers/reviewers have the right to voice their distaste and request Valve to drop the game (their request is still free speech, is it not?)
This should be interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 28 2018, @02:43AM (2 children)
There's also plenty of positive support for the game (asset flip or not) which you can see in the comments [steamcommunity.com].
If/when Valve censors games, people should criticize the platform for caving to pressure, even if it isn't a free speech issue (no law or court is involved, it's just about PR).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday May 28 2018, @03:07AM
The tl;dr of the comments is along the lines of "But GTA lets you kill innocent civilians AND cops en mass yet where is the cry to ban it?" And I 100% agree with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:26AM
It's not a first amendment issue, but it is a free speech issue. The principle of freedom of speech is completely separate from the legal implementation of it. My opinion has almost no influence, but I strongly encourage companies to respect the principle of free speech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @02:45AM (21 children)
The developer absolutely is not entitled to be published.
The reviewers absolutely are not entitled to be heard.
Valve absolutely is not obligated to publish.
You speak of rights. There are no rights here but entitlements and obligations.
Free speech does not apply.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @03:20AM (5 children)
If that's the case, then why the outcry about FB and Google/YouTube kicking out the Alt-Right content?
Sherley, the same 'entitlements and obligations' apply in their cases too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @03:31AM
I don't use Facebook or Google or YouTube, and I refuse to associate with people who do, so I guess all of those people are fucking idiots just like you.
(Score: 1) by sonamchauhan on Monday May 28 2018, @03:33AM
Yes it does
(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.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @04:44AM (3 children)
So in your world freedom only works when you are interacting with the government? But not with other people?
Valve has the right to drop kick them off the platform or let them be.
The publisher has the right to publish the game or not.
The people have the right to bitch about it or not.
If you put conditions on freedom then you are not free. You are looking for a prison.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @04:55AM (2 children)
"Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins"?
So, if Valve - a private entity - considers that "its nose is punched" by the any game it publishes, the Valve is in its right to kick the game out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @03:52PM (1 child)
Go back and re-read my statement. Put your brain fart on this side lines and *READ*. You are putting words in my mouth.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @04:19PM
I'm not putting anyy word in your mouth.
Just asking "Why the definition of the liberty between two private persons - your liberty ends when it stomps over my liberty - isn't enough for you?"
My apologies if the question overloads your intellect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Monday May 28 2018, @07:15AM (10 children)
Sure they do. They might not be entitled to be published by any specific publisher, but if they were to find a willing partner or do so themselves, it is well within their right to have their product reach the market.
Free speech is an ethical issue, not a legal issue. Our laws protect only a certain narrow subset of the wider issue, but they do not fully address it and indeed cannot fully address it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @08:39AM (9 children)
Please define "ethical" in the boundaries of capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:49AM (4 children)
That's entirely irrelevant. If people want more companies to act like SoylentNews and respect the principle of freedom of speech to a very high degree, they can speak up about it. The companies are not obligated to make such changes, but people can still criticize their actions. Why has this become so difficult to understand? 'I don't think X should do Y.' should not be met with 'But X has a legal right to do Y!' That is just a straw man.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @09:36AM (1 child)
Except that "But X has the legal right to do so" holds true, does it not?
Because it's not a single 'I think X shouldn't do Y' opinion, there a two groups of people with two irreconcilable opinions. The 'legal right' becomes relevant when it comes to X's choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @09:34PM
In the same way that 1 + 1 = 2 holds true, but bringing it up in a discussion like this would be entirely offtopic.
Not when people are trying to discuss the ethics of the company's actions and morons keep bringing up legal rights that were never in question to begin with.
It's like people - even people who are ordinarily very skeptical of the free market and corporations - become unable to discuss whether what the corporation is doing is right or not in situations like these. Why not just argue against your opponent's arguments? If you think the censorship is good and they don't, then argue that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @11:35AM (1 child)
> If people want more companies to act like SoylentNews
'nazi cesspit' and "autistic libertard manchild" are not high on most sane people's wishlist
note the 'man' in manchild.
Not a coincidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @09:57PM
But those nazis have the legal right to say those horrible things
Strange how that 'legal right' argument isn't seen as valid anywhere else.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by unauthorized on Monday May 28 2018, @10:26AM (3 children)
Ethics is completely orthogonal to economics. Communists and feudalists can have ethics just as readily as capitalists. Indeed, you don't necessarily need an economy to have an ethical framework, even in a society of truly self-sufficient people it is possible to have ethical standards. Likewise, a perfectly functional economy regardless of it's fundamental model has absolutely no need for ethics and can go just fine without them.
What you are asking me to do is nonsensical. There is no logical basis to define ethics in terms of capitalism, at least no more than defining it in any other arbitrarily chosen ideology.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @11:23AM (2 children)
The philosopher-on-duty is unfortunately absorbed by the obsession with alt-right, no interests of his "Ethics - a treaty on a blog" opus
Let's take the "economy of scientific publications" - plagiarism (e.g. theft) happens even if the scientists should be self-sufficient.
Heh. Show me a perfect functional economy without a base on trust (and I'll show you a terrible efficiency economy. Like the one proposed by our resident "Violently Imposed Monopoly - replace it by contacts" resident). Maybe you'll... mmm... trust more Bruce Schneier on Trust [schneier.com]?
Trust - how do you build that without ethics?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Monday May 28 2018, @04:15PM (1 child)
Hypothetically, you can take a number of people, force them to live in their own segregated areas through fancy-shmancy techno-magical brain implants which prevent any form of cooperation or willing transfer of anything economically valuable, and these people will still develop a certain set of ethical standards (eg not murdering, stealing, trespassing and so on).
Ethics is inevitable in any complex society - the threat of violence upon transgression can only take you so far. Other primates, dolphins, whales, elephants and other species with complex societies also have them, even if theirs are cruder and closer to their biologically wired imperatives than ours, and yet only humans have such a thing as economies.
Indeed, there are human societies today which still live as tribal hunter-gatherers and yet they too have ethical standards.
Slavery. It's very efficient, and there is certainly no reason for trust on either side.
Same way your dog does - habit. We are hardwired to come to trust things as we become accustomed to them, even to our deterrent (ergo drunk driving and poor data backup hygiene).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @04:38PM
Trust - perhaps if only there's a single owner and all the rest are slaves. Because otherwise the matter of trust persists between the slave owners.Efficiency - if it's very efficient, why did the civilized humanity got out of it?
"Ethics is completely orthogonal to economics" is bullshit - as any grossly simplified model of reality - and you know it.
Don't dig your heels in a futile attempt to win the debate, I'm not interested in debating any further.
Do yourself a flavor and think a bit about before declaring that ethics and economic relations between humans are totally independent dimensions - this what orthogonal means, the projection of one onto the other is zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @11:19AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @12:32PM
Both, actually.
And as far as I know, Valve doesn't have a monopoly nor near-monopoly on game distribution, therefore of course also Valve has the right to either keep or drop the game, as they see fit. Unless they would violate a contract by doing so, of course.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Monday May 28 2018, @03:49AM (6 children)
One of the most popular pro-sports games of the past decade, Counter-Strike, could be said to be nearly identical in theme to this. A bunch of terrorists holding innocent civilians hostage, a bunch of counter-terrorists coming in to the rescue. The only two differences:
I will freely admit that I read this and thought 'Yeah, this should probably not be published'. But I also admit that my opinion would have been different pre-Columbine / Sandy Hook / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc / etc...
My prediction - Valve will avoid the heat and refuse to host unless the game removes the ability to be the shooter.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Monday May 28 2018, @06:00AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:08AM
I thought the same when I read the description. "Sounds just like Counter-Strike".
That's a part of the realism. The hostages are your shield. The moment you kill the last one, you're dead.
Though you could argue that in a real hostage situation, it can be of advantage to kill one hostage once in a while to show you mean business. But then again, it can also convince whoever is in command of the good guys that you need to be eliminated at any cost (even the rest of the hostages).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:32AM (2 children)
It's just a video game, so the people offended by it are snowflakes since this game doesn't truly harm anyone. Still, Valve has the right to remove it, and people have the right to criticize Valve for removing it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 28 2018, @10:14AM (1 child)
Rrriiight! Snowflakes. More like big effing icicles sometimes.
Meet snowflake 1: NCOSE
VICTORY: Steam to remove sexually explicit and violent videogames from platform. [endsexualexploitation.org]
National Center on Sexual Exploitation [wikipedia.org]
----
Meet snowflake 2: Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick [salon.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @09:52PM
What about it? There are plenty of right-wing snowflakes (such as the people offended by those kneeling during the anthem, who I criticized vehemently), just as there are plenty of left-wing snowflakes. Don't be a partisan hack who assumes there are only two sides.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:47AM
It will never not be "too soon" since the weekly mass shooting has become a tradition.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @05:57AM
I await the "Inactive Shooter" game, you know, the one that tags and highlights all the concealed carry perverts that are in you immediate area, so you know who to target first when shit goes down. No one ever alerts us to inactive shooters! And it is a shame. Preparation is ninety-nine percent of penetration, I aways say. If you know who has the big iron, you know where to stick it in slow and stealthy like. I have my sweetums, .50 cal, multiple mags, muzzle-flash suppression and WiFi connectivity, with the Go-Pro Massacre-Live feature enabled. So, where you plotting it, homey?
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @12:03AM
If it offends you, ignore it. Are people so comfortable and self-righteous they feel the constant need to poke their nose into everyone's business? Go find something useful to complain about. Better yet, instead of complaining, actually expend effort and time to do something useful.