Bro it's not a "weird art game about trauma" its a rape simulator. Should payment processors be involved here? Probably not. But the game is definitely a bad thing that should not exist and whoever made it is 100% a bad person.
Given that at this point the games that have been delisted include IGF award winners and art games that have been shown in museums, I think we're pretty far past pointing at any individual games as a reason to justify this.
They're probably talking about Mouthwashing which was announced to be delisted from itch (not steam though) today [^1]. Not played the game, only read synopsis, but it's a horror game instigated by a rape. As far as I know, the rapist is not meant to be a sympathetic character.
I've played it, and without spoiling, there's no way to play it through and come to the conclusion that the rapist (and mass murderer) is an even halfway decent person. It's not titillating (not that the graphics or art style would allow for that in any case), and it's not played in any way except upsetting and mature.
Tbh it's a pretty impressive narrative experience, it really leverages the difference between watching a story and experiencing it.
I doubt I'll ever play a game like that, but it does sound reasonable for a game like that to exist. Especially in light of the horror and violence we do allow. (Didn't GTA require you to torture someone? I know people who refuse to play it only for that reason, yet I don't think it was ever banned.) Of course I wouldn't want games that celebrate and glorify rape, and wouldn't really object to seeing those banned, but it's always hard to draw the lines with bans like that.
I recall some years ago that bans on sexual content for teenagers also ended up banning sex ed content, info about contraception and other vital information.
So I'd really prefer to err on the side of less rather than more bans. No blanket bans just because they address some topic, because some topics do need to be addressed.
Ultimately, though, I really don't think it should be up to payment processors to enforce stuff like this. It's up to either Steam or governments. If payment processors want to police stuff, they should be concerning themselves with money laundering, fraud, and other financial crimes.
It's definitely one to play when you're 100% up for it, and I'd argue it might even be best played with other people. It's genuinely rough, but impressive as hell, and it's a great example of people making their vision come to life with pretty simple tech.
brother i don't even know what specific thing you're talking about. hundreds, thousands? of games have been delisted on storefronts for the sin of including themes that the lobbiers found objectionable.
So do what 99.9999% of us already do: don't play these games. You deciding to make it a moral issue that you get to determine for everyone else is where you turn a personal opinion (really just an understandable sense of disgust) into a policy.
If we still decided what was allowed based on the sense of disgust it engenders in some people, we'd still be living like Medieval peasants. Adults should be free to make informed choices, that includes purchasing and consuming things that you and I find repellent.
Question... do you or would you be willing to extend this line of reasoning to child porn? As in, some people want to watch it, and most people find it repulsive, but those that don't should be allowed to make the informed choice to watch it?
If not, where do you draw the line? And why there?
> do you or would you be willing to extend this line of reasoning to child porn?
No, because that's illegal.
Slippery slope morality arguments are stupid and deserve to be treated as such. I've already heard this a thousand times with homosexuals. Men fucking men? What's next, men fucking kids? Men fucking dogs???
No, it's a stupid line of reasoning and, in fact, it's so stupid that even just a few seconds of inspection is enough to have it crumble and fall between the cracks of your hands.
> As in, some people want to watch it, and most people find it repulsive
You have a very fundamental misunderstanding here.
Okay, people find murder repulsive too. But is the reason that we outlawed murder because it's repulsive? Think about it. Throwing up is repulsive. Do we throw people in jail if they feel sick?
No. Whether or not ANYONE thinks something is repulsive is completely unrelated to if it should be allowed.
We did not, have not, and will never ban child pornography on the grounds it's "repulsive". It is, but that doesn't matter. We ban it because children are unable to consent, and subjecting unconsenting people to sexual acts is rape. Distributing the material is equally bad because it creates a market for it - meaning, more rape.
> If not, where do you draw the line? And why there?
When it comes to sex, consent. That's the only place you can draw the line. Otherwise I can easily weaponize your arguments against you. There are many sexual things you personally do which I find repulsive - please, tread carefully. This line of reasoning is dangerous.
I'm not a gamer, so I'm not really up with the play on what games have been banned. I was under the impression some of the games being banned were of the "think of the children" variety.
They had _one_ example of a game that was more of an art piece about the mind of a sexual predator (who was NOT glorified in any way in the game and would mostly make you feel ill).
It was also removed from itch.io in 2014. Never made it to Steam.
But then they got Visa and Mastercard to throw their weight around with vague terms and now stores have to remove everything remotely erotic to not go out of business...
The problem here is how opaque and arbitrary the entire process is. Because someone could sue Visa/Mastercard over certain games' content in an arbitrary jurisdiction, they have imposed a ban worldwide in every game storefront in existence.
I guess we're also going to have to ban movies like A Clockwork Orange then. Stanley Kubrick and all the other people involved in production? 100% bad people.
Careful on that slippery slope, you might fall and break something!
The targeting here is very broad. As a reminder, Collective Shout has tried to get GTA blocked. And Detroit: Become Human for having you play as an abused woman and child as they escape the abuse.
A lot of people are in fact defending the game, just look at the replies to my post. I'm a staunch free speech proponent but defending this game is like defending the Nazis' right to march - we should defend the right to create it on principle, but also we should be clear that like the nazis, the creators of this game are despicable, the game has no value, and the world would be better off if the game didn't exist.
I think its obvious that making the game should be legal, and also obvious that platforms like Steam should ban it. Payment processors are a weird middle ground, I'll leave it to smarter people than me to figure out the ethics there.
