'Rape Day' Game Where You Play as a 'Dangerous Rapist' Pulled After Backlash

[DonViejo]

The gaming platform Steam had advertised the controversial title for weeks—much like Active Shooter, a school-shooting game that was pulled following a similar outcry.

Amy Zimmerman
03.08.19 1:43 AM ET

After a wave of social media backlash, Steam, the popular gaming platform, has announced that it will not be distributing a controversial game called “Rape Day.”

Prior to this latest statement on the Steam Blog, the preview page for “Rape Day” had been up and running on the site for weeks. The pre-release page teased a “choose your own adventure visual novel” in which players can “control the choices of a menacing serial killer rapist during a zombie apocalypse.” The disturbing, since-deleted listing, which was reportedly hidden from regular search results due to its sexually explicit nature, offered a mature content warning for sexual assault, necrophilia, and incest, to name just a few.

“The zombies enjoy eating the flesh off warm humans and brutally raping them but you are the most dangerous rapist in town,” the description continued. “So skip the foreplay and enjoy your Rape Day; you deserve it.”

Naturally, “Rape Day” sparked controversy in the lead-up to its doomed debut. A recent Change.org petition addressed to the CEO of Valve Corporation, which operates Steam, called on the platform to stop “Rape Day” before it started. “Rape is not a game and the makers of this should not be allowed to make money promoting the rape and killing of women,” the writer of the petition urged.

The creator of the game has responded to the petition, as well as to other coverage of “Rape Day” and its backlash, with: “lol.”

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rape-day-game-where-you-play-as-a-dangerous-rapist-pulled-from-steam-after-backlash?ref=home

[JDC]

1. WTF

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. Ugh, this shit must be called out, but at the same time, it's important to understand that the vast

majority of these shock-level games just aren't very good games, beyond the premise -- poor production, bad storytelling -- and the promise of what you can "do" in the game is never fulfilled for people. So they tend to not get a lot of attention anyway. But this kind of coverage broadens its reach and can actually help the creators access more resources to make it a viable game.

I don't know what the answer is, though.

[lpbk2713]

3. It was probably marketed toward twelve year old males.

And Ted Bundy types.

It's good that it's gone.

[MagickMuffin]

4. I suppose if the creator of the game was raped we could all just LOL at him

that seems fair.