People Think Active Shooter Is in Bad Taste
Valve is under fire for a Steam school-shooting game that lets you “hunt and destroy” children jut a week after the Santa Fe High School shootings in Texas that lead to 10 deaths and left 13 wounded.
Active Shooter, which is live on Steam at the time of writing this, is set for release on June 6 and is described by its developer Revived Games as “a dynamic S.W.A.T. simulator.” You are sent to deal with a shooter at the school, but have the option of playing as the actual shooter and shooting school children.
An anti-gun violence charity is asking Valve, who recently threatened to remove many erotic games, to pull the game from Steam. The company has yet to respond.
The games publisher Acid, who also plans to add a survival mode that lets you play as a civilian and “escape or perform a heroic action such as fight against the shooter itself,” defended Active Shooter on the Steam page.
“First of all, this game does not promote any sort of violence, especially any soft [sic] of a mass shooting,” they said.
“Originally when this game started its course of the development, I have planned on having SWAT only based gameplayer [sic]. Then I thought about adding more gameplay to it by adding additional roles: of the shooter and the civilian. While I can see people’s anger and why this might be a bad idea for the game, I still feel like this topic should be left alone. As I mentioned in Steam discussion forums, there are games like Hatred, Postal, Carmageddon and etc., which are even worst compared to Active Shooter and literally focus on mass shootings/killings of people.”
Acid claims to have contacted Valve.
“After receiving such high amount of critics and hate, I will more likely remove shooters role in this game by the release, unless if it can be kept as it is right now,” they said.
A spokesperson for Infer Trust, the UK-base charity pushing for the game’s removal, thinks the game is in bad taste.
“It’s in very bad taste,” they said. “There have been 22 school shootings in the US since the beginning of this year.”
“It is horrendous. Why would anybody think it’s a good idea to market something violent like that, and be completely insensitive to the deaths of so many children?
“We’re appalled that the game is being marketed,” they added.”
Right now, anyone can published a Steam game through Steam Direct for “a $100 recoupable publishing fee per game.” But you’re not allowed to publish hate speech, “i.e. speech that promotes hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation,” or “content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers” or “content that exploits children in any way”.