Featured Image Credit: Steam
Topics: Steam, Valve, no article matching, PC
This article contains references to sexual assault and violence against women that readers may find upsetting.
The developers behind a "non-consensual sex" game which advertised itself as "every woman’s worst nightmare" have chosen to remove their game from sale on Steam, after it was banned in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada.
As detailed in an article by Kotaku's Zack Zwiezen, the developers behind the game opted to pull it from sale voluntarily following a 10,000+ (now 40,000+) change.org petition to remove the game entirely.
Prior to this, Steam banned users in the United Kingdom from purchasing the game from their storefront.
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“At this point, the game has been blocked in three countries - Australia, Canada, and the UK. We don't intend to fight the whole world, and specifically, we don't want to cause any problems for Steam and Valve,” stated the developers, before the title was removed from the storefront.
“They do a great job and are incredibly helpful. If after reading the above, you still believe that such a game should not have been created, then we sincerely apologise to you. At the same time, we would like you to be a bit more open to human fetishes that don't harm anyone, even though they may seem disgusting to you.”
I’ve seen a lot of people waffling online about how this is a form of “censorship” (even though the developers removed it themselves) and how people shouldn’t be offended because it’s merely a “game”, but frankly… I think nothing of value was lost here.
For a start, this game looks ass. It’s a low effort visual novel full of off-putting, doll like characters, cringe dialogue and more spelling mistakes than your average checkmarked Twitter post.
But worse still, the description on Steam lied. It stated that “all consensual sexual situations are depicted as occurring between consenting adults".
Uh, no? “Consent” wasn’t exactly a driving factor in the narrative here.
Honestly, the worst part of this entire story is the Streisand effect at play. By removing it from the Steam storefront, the “game” is now more popular than ever and the alt-right basement dwellers are donating to the developers en-masse.
This is the outcome they wanted. Don’t believe their crap about not wanting to “cause any problems” for Valve. They knew what they were doing, and Steam’s lax restrictions were the scapegoat they used to make it possible.