[RD] This is just vile

[Kozmos]

I mean it's in poor taste but I can't see why it should be removed.

 

[Lexicus]

I mean it's in poor taste but I can't see why it should be removed.

Potential trauma inflicted on school shooting survivors who happen to see it while browsing the Steam Library is a good enough reason for me.

 

[Kozmos]

Potential trauma inflicted on school shooting survivors who happen to see it while browsing the Steam Library is a good enough reason for me.

The potential for trauma is limitless as it can take any number of forms. It is senseless to try and prevent it. [in this context]

 

[Berzerker]

Potential trauma inflicted on school shooting survivors who happen to see it while browsing the Steam Library is a good enough reason for me.

I dont want to get into my personal experience with this too much, but there's a commercial showing a woman in her 60s explaining how she needs supplemental health insurance to go with her Medicare. She says, I'm only in my 60s... and will live longer and need the service. Middle aged people who are dying and wont make it past their 60s dont appreciate the ad. "I hate that commercial" is an actual quote from one of them.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I dont want to get into my personal experience with this too much, but there's a commercial showing a woman in her 60s explaining how she needs supplemental health insurance to go with her Medicare. She says, I'm only in my 60s... and will live longer and need the service. Middle aged people who are dying and wont make it past their 60s dont appreciate the ad. "I hate that commercial" is an actual quote from one of them.

And? The ad is effective, or at least there's no indication that it isn't. The people who hate it aren't in the target group, since the company is not trying to sell insurance to people who know they are dying.

End of the day, advertising and entertainment are such different things and operate by such different principles that there's probably no value in this comparison.

 

[Berzerker]

And the people who are dying hate the ad... People dont have to play a game, the ad comes on and its too late, just the sight of the woman strolling thru the trees talking about how she's gonna live longer will trigger a strong emotional reaction. Lexicus said survivors will be traumatized by the sight of the game, thats comparable to how dying people react to ads reminding them of their harsh reality.

The intent isn't comparable, just the effect

 

[Timsup2nothin]

And the people who are dying hate the ad... People dont have to play a game, the ad comes on and its too late, just the sight of the woman strolling thru the trees talking about how she's gonna live longer will trigger a strong emotional reaction. Lexicus said survivors will be traumatized by the sight of the game, thats comparable to how dying people react to ads reminding them of their harsh reality.

The intent isn't comparable, just the effect

Fair enough.

 

[Traitorfish]

Potential trauma inflicted on school shooting survivors who happen to see it while browsing the Steam Library is a good enough reason for me.

Given the precedent that would set a precedent for removing any number of war games, that could plausibly be interpreted by the people at Steam as an argument against removing it.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I could make a case that I find any encounter with Valve and/or Steam to be traumatic in itself.

 

[Lexicus]

Given the precedent that would set a precedent for removing any number of war games, that could plausibly be interpreted by the people at Steam as an argument against removing it.

That's a legit point. Are there widespread reports of these games triggering PTSD in veterans?

 

[Ryika]

Given the precedent that would set a precedent for removing any number of war games, that could plausibly be interpreted by the people at Steam as an argument against removing it.

Not only games, but any kind of medium. Saving Private Ryan triggers PTSD in WW2 soldiers for example.

How many wonderful pieces of art - media that makes us understand and emphasize with horrors that we thankfully did not have to actively witness ourselves - we would have to get rid of if "it might trigger PTSD in <someone> (maybe)" was a response that were taken seriously...

Simple reality is, there's only so much consideration society can offer before the drawback to going further becomes unreasonably big. If a person has a condition that puts them in a unique danger, then it's mostly on them to avoid that situation as much as possible. Society should give them free access to therapy or whatever else they need to make sure that condition effects them as little as possible, but it is not on all of society to change and give up whatever needs to be given up just so that problem itself is gone.

 

[Zkribbler]

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.

Valka D'Ur is right [as usual]. Unfortunately the BBC story carried neither the name of the game nor the developer. I searched Steam, but couldn't find any reference to it.

But today, I found someone with an online petition. It ended with the celebratory: WE DID IT!

May 30, 2018 — We received a statement from Valve Corporation that they have removed the game from their platform!

This is great news and a reminder to us all that we CAN affect change by speaking up. If you see something - say something! Your voice matters. Thank you all for standing up for this!

Here is the statement from Valve:

"This developer and publisher is, in fact, a person calling himself Ata Berdiyev, who had previously been removed last fall when he was operating as "[bc]Interactive" and "Elusive Team". Ata is a troll, with a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation. His subsequent return under new business names was a fact that came to light as we investigated the controversy around his upcoming title. We are not going to do business with people who act like this towards our customers or Valve.

The broader conversation about Steam's content policies is one that we'll be addressing soon."

We're all in this together - standing side by side with those who have lost family and friends in school shootings. We have to do better! Sending love out to all of you!

-Stephanie

 

[Ryika]

The broader conversation about Steam's content policies is one that we'll be addressing soon.

They've now released the statement they were talking about previously. The important bit:

"So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam, and more recently as we worked on Steam Direct to open up the Store to many more developers: Valve shouldn't be the ones deciding this. If you're a player, we shouldn't be choosing for you what content you can or can't buy. If you're a developer, we shouldn't be choosing what content you're allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.

With that principle in mind, we've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling. Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see. We already have some tools, but they're too hidden and not nearly comprehensive enough. We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you're not interested in. So if you don't want to see anime games on your Store, you'll be able to make that choice. If you want more options to control exactly what kinds of games your kids see when they browse the Store, you'll be able to do that. And it's not just players that need better tools either - developers who build controversial content shouldn't have to deal with harassment because their game exists, and we'll be building tools and options to support them too."

Seems like a fair solution to me. People who want to play controversial games can do so, and people who don't want to deal with that stuff, can hide it. That's of course if we assume that the tools are as useful as they're described to be, but given that the tag-system is already there and works just fine, it's probably not that hard to add filters.

The only ones who lose out here are those who want to control what OTHERS can and cannot buy, and that's a good thing that makes me very happy.

 

[Zkribbler]

Now you can practice shooting school kids.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Ryika]

Now you can practice shooting school kids.

What could possibly go wrong?

GTA has had inner-city rampages for more than a decade now, have you ever heard of a "GTA-inspired rampage" happening in real life? No? Then maybe you should get your act together, because you sound like a Christian Moralist who makes up nonsense to justify their censorious tendencies.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

GTA has had inner-city rampages for more than a decade now, have you ever heard of a "GTA-inspired rampage" happening in real life? No? Then maybe you should get your act together, because you sound like a Christian Moralist who makes up nonsense to justify their censorious tendencies.

Well there was one I think. But yeah, one.

 

[Ryika]

Well, that changes everything.

______

btw., the 'Active Shooter' game that this whole controversy revolved around still didn't have...

school kids

...to shoot at. It was a simple school-themed shooter map with randomized npcs that didn't even look like teachers or anything that _should_ be at that school. That's of course caused by the fact that the create of the game is a lazy PoS who couldn't be bothered to create their own assets that would fit that setting and not because they didn't _want_ to resemble a real school setting, but it's still incredible how disingenuous this story has been presented in some parts of the media.

 

[Bamspeedy]

GTA has had inner-city rampages for more than a decade now, have you ever heard of a "GTA-inspired rampage" happening in real life? No? Then maybe you should get your act together, because you sound like a Christian Moralist who makes up nonsense to justify their censorious tendencies.

And now, the game is at the center of a civil lawsuit involving the murders of three men in the small town of Fayette, Ala. They were gunned down by 18-year-old Devin Moore, who had played Grand Theft Auto day and night for months.

.....

In Oakland, Calif., detectives said the game provoked a street gang accused of robbing and killing six people. In Newport, Tenn., two teenagers told police the game was an influence when they shot at passing cars with a .22 caliber rifle, killing one person.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-a-video-game-lead-to-murder-04-03-2005/

The article was from 2005, no doubt there have been a few cases since then. Sure, it's still an extreme minority, but it has happened. (And I wouldn't suggest banning it, even if I wasn't playing it myself.)

Rating of 17+ doesn't help much with video games if the soccer moms buy them for their teenagers anyways.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The original Silent Hill game had a section where you wandered around a deserted school with "children"-like monsters which you could shoot. Well... the JP/US version did anyway. In the UK they changed it and released a version with more generic monsters, because there'd just been a school shooting here...

 

[warpus]

There is a game where I can become a Nazi soldier and kill civilians

Heck, there is a game where you can kill whoever you want in a peaceful city, steal cars, run them into people, you can pick up prostitutes, you shoot old grandmothers in the face, you do whatever you want. It's a very popular game.

So yeah, some games are "vile", but we have been playing them for a while now