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Rape Day game challenges Valve's relaxed content policy

Valve has been in the business of letting its marketplace sort itself out, but Rape Day is challenging the publishing giant's relaxed content policy.

Ozzie Mejia

March 4, 2019 5:50 PM

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Valve has taken a laissez faire attitude in regards to its Steam platform, allowing game developers to go their own way. But lord knows that there are developers that are looking to push Valve's buttons and push the envelope in a way that few were asking for. The latest challenge to Valve's policy comes in the form of a new game called Rape Day.

According to Eurogamer, Rape Day comes from developer Desk Plant and the game's content is as tasteless as one might assume from that title. The game is described as a visual novel, with the developer boasting over 500 images and 7,000 words that allows users to "verbally harass, kill, and rape women as [they] choose to progress the story."

Rape Day has been listed on the Steam marketplace since mid-February and is expected to release next month. And with the game not only containing, but actively flaunting, images containing and alluding to extreme violence, sexual assault, rape, necrophilia, and incest, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Valve's methods regarding developer guidelines for the Steamworks Distribution Program and its content policies are now under increased scrutiny.

For what it's worth, here are Valve's guidelines on what should not be published on its service:

• Adult content that isn’t appropriately labeled and age-gated
• Libelous or defamatory statements
• Content you don't own or have adequate rights to
• Content that violates the laws of any jurisdiction in which it will be available
• Content that exploits children in any way
• Applications that modify customer’s computers in unexpected or harmful ways, such as malware or viruses
• Applications that fraudulently attempts to gather sensitive information, such as Steam credentials or financial data (e.g. credit card information)

Valve has been in the business of letting the marketplace sort itself out since last June, when it officially kicked off its current policy via a blog post.

"We've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling," Valve's Erik Johnson said at the time. "Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see."

It now remains to be seen whether Valve will take any action regarding this game. Shacknews will stay on top of this story and monitor whether Valve steps in to address this situation.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?