Rape Explicit Game on Steam

Well, that is quite the hot take.

Unfair double standards here; why do people accept games about murder, but not rape? Hell I've read about people that did go violent (berserk crazy) after playing games w/ murder -- that is my reasoning. If one is allowed then so should the other.

It's not quite that simple. Murder in itself is of course bad, but it's all about context, realism, and how it makes us feel. For instance, if a game is made in 3D realistic graphics, as opposed to let's say 2D pixel-graphics or something arcadey, it will make us relate and feel much stronger emotions (like empathy) towards the characters. We also know the NPCs are just code and don't actually feel anything, so how it makes us feel is all that matters.

In most realistic games where you're killing people it feels justified because they're the "bad guys" or the killing in itself isn't very graphic and there's not much focus/attention around their death. I can't remember any realistic game I've played where the goal is to go around and kill innocent people. That would most likely make us feel bad and therefore not enjoy the game, unless for example the game is presented in a humorous manner.

i would argue that rape is worse than murder, there is a different tragedy to someone having to live with the reality of their violation.

it is just a game IMO. It won't make you rapist. The same GTA won't make you car thief, murderer, drug dealer, robber etc. That's just bullshit some people say to make us look bad. We gamers should know more that it ain't working that way.

So you can judge them?

Hmmm yeah let's start throwing mud and go full ad-hominum on each other. Surely that's gonna be a fantastic discussion.

But what would you have voted than?

+1

Your PC has been infected just by reading this comment. Your personal files are now encrypted. Send me 1000 cinnamon buns to my home or else I won't give you the password to break the encryption. And no, the password is not "123456"!

Hopefully you were right => edited the title

I'm very concerned about rape. But arguing that a game about rape leads to rape - and a visual novel at that - is just as flimsy and spurious as arguing that a game about killing people leads to murder.

I played a game called Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer - where you play a serial killer who goes out to pick up victims to drug and leave naked in your dungeon full of traps, intending to mentally and physically break them. You strive for the "Beautiful Escape", where the victim leaves alive but so physically and mentally scarred that they're on the verge of breakdown. Failing that, you at least make sure they never leave. The subject matter is awful, and the game is disturbing, but it's actually a rather good game, and one I recommend people play.

But how do you protect this worthwhile game from a game filter? How do you decide that a game about torturing and murdering people in your dungeon as a serial killer is okay, but a visual novel about raping women during a zombie apocalypse isn't? Where do you draw the line?

Don't get me wrong, the rape game in question sounds awful, but I still don't think we should remove it. As Niel Gaiman aptly put it, "The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't."

And we're not even talking about what's legal here, we're talking about Steam. The same Steam that until recently allowed nudity and sex in games like The Witcher series, but banned Kindred Spirits on the Roof, an Overwhelmingly Positive visual novel about lesbian relationships that just so happens to have a bit of nudity. Any automated filter script Steam employs is going to be flawed. There are too many games for actual people to sort through and manually allow or deny, and even those people themselves could be biased and make bad calls. There's really no way to allow some adult games without allowing all adult games - even the awful, reprehensible ones that no one should buy.

It's a woman thing anyway, right? And these women always exaggerate everything, right?

You're probably going to want to be more clear on if you're being sarcastic or sincere with that comment, given how often we've had nearly identical statements presented on SG with sincerity.

free speech is everything, apparently. I'm sure it varies a lot depending on the audience and I guess SGers are mostly unconcerned by rape.

I think many people are "mostly unconcerned" because playing a game about rape and actually raping someone are two different things ;)

You should be more concerned about progressing in your alchemy studies, you haven't managed to replicate the philosopher's stone yet.

Even if you make it a bit less 'bland' as murder, but take something like torture. Can scrape quite a few games off Steam for that alone. BioShock, Hitman from that list definitely fall under that category, probably most of them, but can´t recall for all of them at the top of my head. Just like pretty much any game where you have to 'interrogate' someone. Classics like Manhunt and The Punisher are purely that.

Bit of a double morale in my opinion if you're in favour of allowing that to be on Steam, but something about rape is bad hmmkay and should be kept off it.

I could spend an hour writing my own post, but it would come off as plagiarism of you, @Timobkg. Stupid, poor taste, possibly troll game, but should it banned? No. Ditto, Amen, God save the Queen, etc.

Exactly this. Try getting out of your own point of view and look at it from a distance.

It's like how (generalisations incoming) Western people despise dogs being slaughtered for food. Ok, let's ban that. Well, then we ban eating beef too, Hindu's don't like that. Then pork is haram and not kosher, only need to find some people against eating chickens and goat and sheep and we're set for everyone being a mandatory vegetarian.

Projecting your own norms on a complete general population doesn't quite work well, I thought 'we' (yeah I know there's no such thing) as gamers of all people should know that, given how often games have gotten slack.

Edit: removed my comments below as without the other comments there's not much point to them.

But are we on the 'right' side there, or just on 'our' side?

Good point although I remember one of the Call of Duty was more than a bit controversial because you are undercover in a terrorist group and a mission literally has you happily slaughtering innocent people in an airport to protect your cover.

It did raise issues with a lot of people though, which Rape Day doesn't seem to be doing much.

If anything, as more and more topics creep into video games, I'd expect better age checks and warnings before purchasing.

Exactly. There should be some kind of filter/protection system, regardless of the main topic here.

Whether a distributor of goods decides to sell a given product or not has nothing to do with "free speech", which is entirely about the power of law/government to regulate speech.
Something has not been "banned" if a distributor of goods does not sell it. If Wal-Mart doesn't sell something, it hasn't been banned. If the law/government says Wal-Mart cannot sell it, it has (probably) been banned.

Thank you. Let's not act as if Steam was the only place people can buy games. "Publishers" like this one can easily set up their own online store for anyone who like to play games about raping lingerie-clad little girls or whatever. Now I need a shower just for writing that.

You're right of course.
There is a difference between censorship and free speech, which is why Hollywood exercised a self imposed code for so many years as being far preferable to government regulation stepping in. Steam could also practice a little judgement in this regard without threatening anyone's right to free speech.

Thanks especially for the first item.
I agree to your "banned" item as well, but representatives of Valve used the term itself in the past, so everyone adopted it. There's also a technical difference being Valve's "removed" and "banned" from store (latter ones don't show up in game lists anymore, achievements aren't shown anymore, trading cards become unmarketable).

Good points. I also find it really annoying when people scream free speech when content distributors choose to not allow certain things on their platform. That's not to say the creators of that content can't put it out somewhere else, it's just that those distributors don't like the image it conveys to potential users. It's why they don't put hardcore pornography on Netflix. Especially when it's a platform children may use, a lot of countries actually have legal restrictions on the content that can appear. So crying 'free speech' is a bit stupid.

What if the women raped, actually identify themselves as men?

Thank you.

+1 Why is it only women who get raped, are men not a choice as well? For all fairness both genders should be included victims and perpetrators.

Although I would still say a game shouldn't glorify rape for fun, people are easily influenced, take a look at social media. I'm fine if it's possible in a game, that's your choice as a player, but there should be another central point than just that.

Side note, even JAPAN has banned rape games, and you know how kinky Japanese things can get.

That must be tough. =/
I hope they will get better. That's a scar for life.

What do you mean by 'I helped the rape victims' ? You have helped actual rape victims before, or by ignoring the game you just helped the rape victims?

and the family from murdered People? do you ignore gta as well?

Probably because people die and get raped every day, but the number of the ones that die, greatly exceeds the ones that get raped, so it is just statistics. If you live in Saudi Arabia, you probably will be ok with both:)

I think for me it's the context. I would feel very uncomfortable playing a game with fleshed out characters where my goal was to murder them in horrible ways. Like if in the story I was a loving husband and family man secretly plotting to murder my whole family in nasty ways. I would feel the same way about a game like that as I do about a game about rape. I have even avoided playing the likes of manhunt, just because the violence is so gratuitous. I don't normally know the personal history of all the NPCs I mow down in a shooter game, or connect with them in any meaningful way, so it's easy to disconnect and see them as nothing more than the digital code they are living in my computer.

Rape on the other hand, is a very personal crime and especially in the context of a visual novel, the victim will probably have some kind of personality, so the act has much more weight behind it. And it's also a crime, where there's never a situation that the receiver deserved it in some way, making it impossible to justify. Whereas, in a game like hitman, the murder is easy to justify, because the targets are usually horrible people.

Now if, God forbid, rape was ever turned into a standard game mechanic, and you just ran around raping and being raped, it would probably also reach the point of not being a big deal. But I guess we may have already reached that point with genital jousting?

Murder, is at the end of the day, ends up with someone dying. And for other reasons (accidents, diseases, age) death is more or less part of our daily life, and of our life in general. (What lives, one day will die.) Also if someone dies, usually a few close people grieve them, and through them, we also get to know grief - I think first on our parent's side, when telling the family how an acquaintance of theirs died, or sometimes through classmates', friends' stories. Important part is that regardless of murder, accident, sickness or natural death, we very, very rarely see death eye to eye, usually just through people close to the passed.

With rape, it's an entirely different ordeal. The victim survives (don't quote on me numbers and percentages, just general idea) sometimes with various physical wounds too, but as far as I know, almost always emotionally scarred and impacted. And as someone said here before, rape is a huge taboo in western countries. Not in the turn a blind eye way, but protection for ourselves and for the victim, too - even if that is not always good. We don't know how it is. We don't know what the victim felt / feels. We decide that they need to stand up step up against rape, or we decide that they were harmed so we should act like nothing happened even if they would want to talk about it.

Also the stigma of being a rape victim usually stirs some of the reactions, depending on culture and individual "bystander": the victim is defiled and impure, was asking for it, they are being forever pampered and pitied even if they want to move on, they are "the person who got raped" and solely treated as one. And then not to mention how it can affect their future life - being afraid to be out alone at night, nightmares, distrust towards men (even to the point of not being able to create/maintain a romantic relationship) - that alone can be a problem, not to mention if their environment starts speculating about these present or not present things, and try to give them space, ending up alienating the victim from themselves, while kind of trying to help.

All in all, it's a very confusing and hard topic because lack of our experience, the complicated nature of the act and consequences, and how we, as a person and a society expect them to behave, try to help, or what we do about it.
Also, at least game-wise killing something is the archetype of being stronger than something/getting stronger, and the simplest mechanic for most of the games in progress, getting items or protecting your life (warfare is as old as humanity). This sounds very wrong, but rape has no redeeming aspect of any kind, it's completely self-serving.

This is interesting stuff man! I want to know how the brain works!

I had a fantastic lecture last year about how taboos work and why they exist in society, I really recommend you looking into this topic, there will be more and better explanation of various aspects of it than I could tell in this already too long comment :)

People in general are trash.

I was not aware that trash has a gender.

When I read stuff like this, I feel pretty ok that 90% of my SG activity nowadays comes from solving support tickets.
I hope you never have children (as long as you have that mindset)

I'm sorry you feel that way, Elunes. I hope you get better people in your life.

not disagreeing but i can introduce you to some girls that will change your opinion or atlest even it out.

That's the most tired argument to justify using rape for commercial gain though.
What would his response be if Steam banned all these games altogether?

Hiding behind freedom of speech and "oh there's things out there that are just as bad" is the refuge of the weaklings with no conscience.

Hey, rape is not as bad as pedophilia so it's ok.

Except drugs are ok. They are just like alcohol and cigarettes, which are ok.

And lying is also ok, depending on the circumstance.

9 out of 10 people love gang rapes.