Valve Pulls Controversial Game From Steam
Earlier this week it was revealed that a game with more than a little controversial content was set to be released on Steam. The release date was set for sometime within the next couple of months.
At the time of writing, I was deliberately a bit vague on details.
Fortunately, in a report via PCGamesN, sanity has prevailed. Valve has announced that, in an exception to their general rule, the game ‘Rape Day’ (yes, that really is the title) will no longer be released on their platform.
What Has Valve Said?
There has been more than a little scrutiny over what Valve’s position would be regarding this game. After years of a lot of dithering, the company effectively approved a formal policy of ‘anything goes, but within legal reasons’. While this game was not necessarily illegal, Valve’s decision to remove it does tick a pretty huge box in the ‘common sense’ category.
“Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary—we simply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judgement call about any risk it puts to Valve, our developer partners, or our customers. After significant fact-finding and discussion, we think ‘Rape Day’ poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won’t be on Steam.”
There has been many games released on Steam to date which have been controversial. This was, however, perhaps the strongest test as to how far the limits set by Valve could be pushed.
On the whole, it seems like an entirely sensible decision to me!
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
