A first-person shooter video game that allows players to assume the role of a school shooter received massive backlash a week before its June 6 release. Due to that backlash, Valve, Inc. decided to remove the game from its digital platform known as Steam.
The game, called "Active Shooter," developed by Revived Games and set to be published by ACID, came with the following description:
Active Shooter - the Simulation. Pick your role, gear up and fight or destroy! Be the good guy or the bad guy. The choice is yours! Only in "Active Shooter", you will be able to pick the role of an Elite S.W.A.T member or the actual shooter. Lead your team, extract civilians and neutralize the shooter.
To say the game and its content are grotesque and insensitive is an understatement. Its potential release was even more troubling considering the United States has dealt with numerous school shootings over the last few months.
'Psychological Horror'
Gameplay shows players walking the halls of a school, using various firearms to gun down unsuspecting students and S.W.A.T members trying to stop the carnage. A box in the corner of the screen keeps a kill count.
Thousands of outraged Americans started a petition through Change.org to prevent the game's release on Steam, the digital platform created by Valve, Inc. that allows gamers to purchase new games, share content, and talk in forums with other members of the gaming community.
As of now, the petition has garnered more than 200,000 signatures.
If gamers search for the game on Steam's website, the search comes back with nothing. Before Valve, Inc. removed the game, users would see a warning that stated, "Content in this product may not be appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work."
Under the warning are various tags that help describe the content in the game, with some being more fitting than others. Among them are the descriptions "Violent" and "Psychological Horror."
The Violent Video Game Obsession
Following every mass shooting, there is the usual call for more gun control. But there are also calls by psychologists and political commentators to take a closer look at American pop culture and entertainment, as many people believe that things like explicit music, graphic movies, and violent video games, are possible factors that influence school shooters and teach them to devalue human life.
After the Sandy Hook school shooting, analysts and commentators stated the shooter was obsessed with violent video games, such as Call of Duty, another first-person shooter video game that is played by millions of people around the world.
Stephanie Robinett, the creator of the petition, asked the question everyone seems to be asking, "How can anyone sleep at night knowing that they are profiting from turning deadly school shootings into entertainment?"
The start of the game came with the following disclaimer:
Revived Games believes violence and inappropriate actions belong in video games and not real world, and insists that in no event should anyone attempt to recreate or mimic any of the actions, events or situations occurring in this game.
But people said the disclaimer changes nothing.
In a statement to NBC News, Ryan Petty, the father of Alaina Petty, one of the young girls killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine's Day, said, "Keeping our kids safe is a real issue affecting our communities and is in no way a 'game.'"
Another parent of one of the Parkland victims, Fred Guttenberg, who is filing a lawsuit against the gun store where the shooter bought his firearm as well as the gun manufacturer that made it, asked his Twitter followers to contact the company to have the plug pulled on the game.
The pressure certainly paid off.
In a statement to Deadline, Valve, Inc. explained why the game would no longer be available on its site:
We have removed the developer Revived Games and publisher ACID from Steam.
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.
Fred Guttenberg praised the news, saying, "Wow, this is amazing news!!!"
Wow, this is amazing news!!!https://t.co/004mjsntsV
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) May 29, 2018
Active Shooter isn't the first game of its kind, as another video game was created in 2005 to mimic the 1999 mass school shooting at Columbine High School. While other popular video games like Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, and Watch Dogs aren't games where players specifically take on the role of school shooters, they allow gamers to shoot innocent civilians and police officers indiscriminately.
Whether or not one believes that violent video games influence mass shooters or desensitize Americans to violence, the issue will be debated for years to come.
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