[RD] This is just vile

[Zkribbler]

Now you can practice being a school shooter

Steam store school-shooting game 'appalling'

A "school-shooting simulator" video game has been described as "appalling" by an anti-gun violence charity.

According to its listing on the Steam video game store, the software lets players "slaughter as many civilians as possible" in a school environment.

Charity Infer Trust called on Valve - the company behind the Steam games store - to take the title down before it goes on sale, on 6 June.

Valve has not responded to the BBC's request for comment.

The game has been posted on the Steam store by an independent developer previously accused of selling "asset-flipped" games. (Asset-flipping is taking third-party game engines and graphics and repackaging them for sale with minimal alteration or development.)

The school-shooting game is described as "realistic" and "impressive". And the developer has suggested it will include 3D models of children to shoot at.

However, the creator also says: "Please do not take any of this seriously. "This is only meant to be the simulation and nothing else."

A spokeswoman for Infer Trust said: "It's in very bad taste. 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."

Many gamers have complained that Steam moderators have removed games featuring nudity, but have allowed a school-shooting simulator to remain on the store.

 

[Berzerker]

maybe they should make a game where players have to avoid school shooters

 

[Kaitzilla]

Wow, Active Shooter needs to be taken off steam immediately!
Or being able to play the crazed killer needs to be disabled.

 

[onejayhawk]

The problem is that it is accurate. If you want to change something, change the parameters of the schools to make them harder targets.

J

 

[Perfection]

I store my work writing utensils in a Darth Vader cup, and he killed all those younglings.

Steam would be dumb to keep that game available. And I'm sure they'll get rid of it.

 

[Yeekim]

Nice marketing stunt.

 

[Senethro]

Clever protest or cynical cash grab?

 

[caketastydelish]

Clever protest or cynical cash grab?

I’m leaning on cash grab.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Nice marketing stunt.

Clever protest or cynical cash grab?

I’m leaning on cash grab.

Those are not mutuallly exclusive.
To be honest, I think such a game could be done right, but probably not by your typical steam trash developer.
It would also be a decent idea for an asymmetric multiplayer game if school shootings weren't such a problem and it wasn't too soon.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Some things are always too soon.

I'm reminded of a couple of years back when Paul Bernardo wrote a book and tried to sell it on Amazon (he's a serial rapist who killed three of his victims - young teenage girls; he's currently in prison). There was a backlash from Canadians that Amazon never anticipated, and facing a possible boycott from Canadian customers in the Christmas season wasn't something they decided to risk. So they pulled the book, not only from the Canadian site, but from the U.S. as well.

If you really want this game pulled, write to the company and tell them. Just posting here won't do any good.

 

[Ryika]

I'm sure Valve will be very careful with removing things just because of moral outcry after the backlash that happened when they removed the game Hatred where you can play a guy who goes on a rampage.

And good for them. If you don't like a game, don't buy it - easy.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Reminds me of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Columbine_Massacre_RPG!

 

[Ryika]

So I've now further looked into the "controversy" around this game, and I have come to the conclusion that my first post was still too charitable.

According to the dev, the game does not feature child npcs, and the promotional material does not (and did not) feature any claims that it would. So where does that claim come from?

And the developer has suggested it will include 3D models of children to shoot at.

The promotional footage (which does indeed look like a terrible asset-flip non-game btw) certainly includes a map that represents a school, but no child models, and it certainly is not structured in a way to represent a "realistic school shooting".

There's a forum post of the devs in the thread "Can you actually shoot kids?":

Hey, why not. I'll make sure to add young NPC models before release ((;

That was obviously a sarcasm. Sorry.

...but that post was made 18 hours ago, surely it can't be the case that some idiot at the BBC read that as a serious post and then wrote that article within minutes, riiiight?

But other than that, I could not find any posts with information about children that you can supposedly able to kill (and there aren't that many comments, as the game was apparently added to steam yesterday). So what has that claim been fabricated from? Thin air, that's where it's from.

Utterly ridiculous.

 

[civvver]

There was a game where you could assassinate jfk. I don't remember if it was on steam or not. But there's a lot of stupid crap on steam, I saw one called a shower with dad simulator. Seems creepy, I didn't click on it. But I don't think steam should necessarily ban games. They should ban buggy games that exploit customers with undelivered content. But not censor based on political or social stuff. Like mass effect 2/3 were banned in china because you could have sex with an alien and they're xenophobic. We don't want to head down that road. Or germany banning games with references to hitler. Just don't buy the game and people will stop making it.

 

[Bootstoots]

It's funny - I'm misanthropic enough to like the idea of games like this, but not misanthropic enough to call for gutting welfare programs or bankrupting people with health problems.

 

[civvver]

It's offensive, but you know what? So are tons of other things like movies. There's a movie called rampage about a kid who plans out and goes on a columbine type shooting spree. Where was the outrage over that?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's funny - I'm misanthropic enough to like the idea of games like this, but not misanthropic enough to call for gutting welfare programs or bankrupting people with health problems.

The latter is obviously further along the mysanthropy scale though. The overwhelming majority of people seem to readily discern the difference between games and reality and react to imagery of the same actions between the two differently.

Anyway this has the sound of a game where someone coughs up a low quality product with a shock value concept to fish for $$$. It's not the first of its kind, and I doubt it's the worst in terms of disgusting index nor quality. Ideal outcome is that it gets ignored and very few people buy it, but things never seem to go ideally.

Clever protest or cynical cash grab?

Yes.

Actually given we have a Steam shovelware asset-flipper you can make a PRETTY SOUND guess at the motivation for releasing this title...

They should ban buggy games that exploit customers with undelivered content.

False advertising too. It'd have been hilarious if Civ 5 at release and EU 4 got banned off Steam this way (that both games engaged in false advertising is not debatable). But nah man, Steam doesn't let little things like consistently applied standards get in their way.

 

[Ryika]

Or germany banning games with references to hitler. Just don't buy the game and people will stop making it.

OffTopic, but... that's actually not true anymore. Given that games have been accepted as an art form, depicting Hitler and Verfassungsfeindliche Symbole in them would no longer be a reason to ban them. The only exception would be if these games actually depicted the Nazis as the good guys.

These days it's more that companies self-censor their games because of the history of German censorship while the experts say that an actual ban on such a game is highly unlikely and not backed by current law.

 

[civvver]

Well good cus that kind of censorship is a slippery slope.

 

[metatron]

Or germany banning games with references to hitler. Just don't buy the game and people will stop making it.

What Ryika said.

Couple things valuable to know:

1. The relevant German law applies to things designed to undermine "constitutional order" or incite violence and collateral hateful unlawfulness.
So it's not as much about sissy notions of "hate speech" and "offensiveness" as most Anglospherians think.
About 99% of the application is about actual symbols of organisations. I.e. if we were American we'd have banned all these badges the Klan people have (probably cueing them to just make up new ones).
Rarely enough it is the actual free form incitement of hateful or violent activity, you know, actual speech.

2. There are broad exceptions for "education" and "art". As Ryika alluded to things like PI censoring the German version of HoI4 are usually self-imposed.
PI just didn't want the publicity that would have come with doing what would have probably turned out to be legal (courts appear to be increasingly willing to accept that games can be deemed "art").
There's also a less broad exception for "satire". That's somewhat shaky ground though, obviously.

3. This law applies to all sorts on non-Nazi and intuitively non-german symbols as well.
E.g. we ban iconography of a whole host of political organisations that authorities consider too violent and/or extremist.
E.g. commonly that comes up as an actual issue regarding Kurdish separatism.

4. In foreign perception this is often mixed with German youth protection laws and the relevant censorship, that is highly excentric by Anglosphere standards in that it censors violence so much while conversely being very lax with regards to sex and nudity. (You would find the German antenna-and-tinfoil-TV early evening version of GoT both amusing and shocking for those reasons.)
This often applies to depictions of political violence and warfare and thus to a bystander appears to be intermixed with the censorship of hateful political iconography.