Valve has announced that Rape Day will no longer be available on Steam. The horrible attempt at shock gaming was available for preorder through Steam's Steam Direct program.
In a short statement, Valve stated that when it comes to games that get distributed on Steam, the company mainly follows a "wait and see" policy. Valve then makes a judgement call, taking into consideration the risks it offers to the company, the developers, and the customers.
After a review, Valve declared the game "poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won't be on Steam." Valve continued by saying that while Steam is there to help developers, the developer of this game "has chosen content matter and a way of representing it that makes it very difficult for us to help them do that."
As of this writing, Valve's announcement has so far garnered more than 1,200 likes with the comments leaning towards congratulating Valve for the decision.
Developed by Desk Plant, the game is set in a zombie apocalypse and allows players to control a protagonist that is able to "verbally harass, kill people and rape women as you choose to progress the story." In its official website, the game's author contended that while murder has been normalized, the same cannot be said of rape. The author did admit that the game was about power-fantasy.
So this game, Rape Day, is currently being reviewed by @steam_games. Needless to say, this is the kind of game that should NOT be on Steam, in any capacity, and I think we all need to collectively let the steam reviewers know that a game wholly centered on rape is *unacceptable* pic.twitter.com/7sCm6QNmI7
— J.L.Rose (@JaxonLeeRose) March 5, 2019
In a March 5 post, the game's developer said that the project was complete and was waiting for Steam's review process to be made public. The same post said that the review process could take longer since the content is illegal in some countries. The developer admitted that they removed content related to a “baby killing scene” in order to avoid Valve’s rule of having content that exploits children.
The game's listing on Steam has caused a barrage of criticism towards Valve and its hands-off policy. Valve has been known to remove games that it determines to be illegal, as well as those it considers are merely trolling. Just last year, Valve applied the “trolling rule” and remove a game titled Active Shooter. According to Valve, the game simulated school shootings and had no purpose but to cause conflict and outrage. Valve also said that the developer of Active Shooter had copyright violations in addition to customer abuses and various misrepresentations.
