News

Valve Decides To Pull Controversial Game From Steam

A rather odious image from the game.

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. Specifically because I didn’t necessarily want to add fuel to the fire. Well, more accurately, let the game be identified by name. Particularly since Valve has largely been looking to employ a relatively relaxed ‘anything goes’ approach to adult gaming. This potential release, however, did take things a bit far. With murder and rape forming the main ‘themes’ of the plot, this had PR disaster written all over it.

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.

A rather odious image from the game.

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!