For the last several years, Valve has grappled with the question of which games should and shouldn't be allowed on Steam. Now the largest distributor of PC games faces a major test of its rules around content, as attention centers on one of the most objectionable games to appear on the platform: Rape Day, a visual novel in which the player "controls the choices of a menacing serial killer rapist during a zombie apocalypse."
"Verbally harass, kill, and rape women as you choose to progress the story," reads the official description of the game on Steam, which Polygon reported on this morning. "It's a dangerous world with no laws. The zombies enjoy eating the flesh off warm humans and brutally raping them but you are the most dangerous rapist in town." The page, which cannot be viewed unless you've logged into Steam and set your store preferences to allow 'Adult Only Sexual Content,' includes a trailer and screenshots of 3D-modeled characters which depict the scenes described.
The developer explains that they've removed a 'baby killing scene' to avoid being accused of including 'content that exploits children.'
"Murder has been normalized in fiction, while rape has yet to be normalized," writes Rape Day's creator on the game's website, itself essentially an FAQ defending the project. The only other section of the website is a bibliography of sorts that points to six academic studies and articles that refute a connection between violent video games and real-life violence.
The unnamed creator of Rape Day says they have spent two years developing the half-hour-long game. In the first blog update on Rape Day's Steam page, its creator offered a puzzling defense of the game: that its intended audience includes sociopaths. "Despite what people are saying in the discussion, the game is marked as adult. It's for a niche audience; If it's not your type of game you definitely don't need to play it but as other's [sic] have said I tried to make a game that I would enjoy playing, and there are other people like me. 4% of the general population are sociopaths and the type of people that would be entertained by a story like this is not even limited to pure sociopaths. I understand that it is however it is not the majority of people; again the game is for a niche audience."
