Steam game promoting sexual assault removed from sale in UK, Australia and Canada
Women in Games called on Valve to remove the game earlier this week
A game from Steam which provoked anger earlier this week due to its promotion of sexual assault and incest has been removed from sale in some regions.
This article contains strong references to non-consensual sexual assault and abuse.
On Wednesday, the Women in Games organisation called on Valve to remove the game, which VGC will not name, which offered players an adult visual novel with “a huge focus on incest and male domination” in which they have to respond to their mother’s affair by “claiming her for yourself”.
The game was subsequently removed from sale in Australia and Canada, following the action of officials in those countries, and according to LBC it has now been removed for sale in the UK too.
UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the radio station that the “sort of vile material” featured in the game “is already currently illegal”, adding: “We have stronger powers being brought in as part of the online safety act to make sure that platforms of all kinds meet certain standards.”
The game’s Steam description tells players they have to “own” their own mother, and then “become every woman’s worst nightmare” and “leave no p*ssy non-f*cked, since that’s the only thing they all want – never take ‘no’ for an answer”.
Its Steam page, which also includes a screenshot of a woman with a hand clenched around her throat, says it “graphically contains sex and violence, mature language, nudity, graphic depictions of oral, vaginal, and other sexual activities” and “includes incest, blackmail, unavoidable non-consensual sex, as well as the use of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.”
Further reading
Valve does have a list of rules on games that shouldn’t be published on Steam, generally revolving around content that breaks the law. This includes games that “promote hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation,” as well as “content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers”. It appears to initially be up to Valve to determine whether the game in question falls foul of these guidelines.
While Valve hasn’t yet pulled the game from sale outright, meaning it can still be bought in most other regions, it has at least seemingly carried out requests to remove it when asked to do so by officials from countries where its presence is illegal.
