Steam's latest horror was removed because Valve saw it as an image liability due to the amount of attention it had been getting. The reasoning behind the decision couldn't have been a more clear indictment of the company's current values: the game wasn't taken down because it was clearly designed with the intent to create controversy, and not because it was so obviously offensive to a huge section of the population. After outlets began picking up the existence of the game, Valve decided to take it down.Īll's well that ends well, right? Wrong. There have already been some offenders since then, but none have been as bad as Rape Day, a game that's only going to be mentioned this once because talking about how awful it is is exactly what the people who made it were aiming for. Instead, Valve just threw its hands up in the air and told its users that the outrage-seeking rape games were their problem now, removing the already poor system that was in place and failing to replace it with anything. It was finally time for Valve to take a stand and bar intentionally offensive titles from its service.

After years of complaints regarding Steam's obscure game curation guidelines, the company decided to finally remove its archaic case-by-case review system. It's easy to find where everything went to hell (the unfun kind, not the good kind - check out Devil May Cry 5 for the latter), too. There wasn't an alternative, and despite protest, developers didn't have a choice but to stay on the platform and play ball, sharing the field opposite a team of some of the internet's worst degenerates. Previously, it almost seemed like it didn't matter what Valve did. Related: Valve Won't Regulate Steam Anymore, Unless Games Are Strictly Illegal Steam is on fire, and Valve is sitting at one of the Nazi propaganda-laden tables inside of the service like the dog from that famous internet meme muttering 'this is fine' while typing up the most neutral response imaginable to another PR disaster. Valve has always been enigmatic at the best of times. Yet here we are, and here Valve is, perched precariously on the edge of a cliff that's been built, stone by stone, on one avoidable controversy after another.

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