Steam Pulls 'Suicide Simulator' Game and Others For Trolling

Valve's new policy to remain neutral on Steam'due south gaming content is showing no tolerance for suspected trolling. On Th the digital store dropped AIDS Simulator, ISIS Simulator and Suicide Simulator —all of them shoddy-looking games with controversial titles.

"This was a case where the developer's but goal was trolling," Valve told PCMag in an e-mail.

The company banned them a twenty-four hours after Valve appear it would no longer censor any games for controversial content. "We've decided that the right arroyo is to let everything onto the Steam Store," information technology said at the time.

Even so, the new policy isn't an "anything goes" approach either. The company did mention an of import caveat: games believed to exist "straight up trolling" or offer illegal content volition not be immune.

On Thursday, Valve decided that the controversial games from the programmer "BunchOD00dz" qualified. The Twitter user @RobotBrush noticed the removals. The affected titles included AIDS Simulator, which lets players "impale all Africans" in revenge for infecting the player with the AIDS virus.

AIDs Simulator Game

"AIDS Simulator is a very short offset-person shooter with boring gameplay, bad graphics and generic assets," the description for the game said. Another $2.99 title, chosen Suicide Simulator, was marketed with the words: "End your life using a variety of unlike tools and methods."

The removals suggest that Valve is taking a hard line against content that deliberately seeks to anger the public. On Thursday, the visitor besides told PCMag that another game called Active Shooter would remain banned on the platform, despite Valve's new policy to refrain from censoring content.

"We rejected Active Shooter because it was a troll, designed to do cipher but generate outrage and cause conflict through its existence," the company said, alluding to how the game can let you carry out a schoolhouse shooting.

"We'd decline Active Shooter if information technology had been submitted by whatever other developer," Valve added. (The programmer disagrees about the trolling.)

The takedowns also occur every bit some critics fear games with sexual violence and hate speech will flourish over the digital store. "Gabe Newell, the President of Valve which owns Steam, has decided to respond to our climate of sexual harassment and abuse by profiting off of gamified sexual violence," the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation claimed on Thursday.

Valve is well-enlightened that not anybody will support its new policy on content. But the visitor explained on Wednesday that it doesn't desire to make up one's mind what people can or can't purchase, or what developers tin and tin can't create. (Aside from deliberate trolling.)

"The Steam Store is going to contain something that yous detest, and don't recollect should exist," Valve executive Erik Johnson wrote in a blog postal service. "Only y'all're as well going to see something on the Store that you lot believe should be there, and some other people will hate information technology and desire information technology not to exist."