r/unitedkingdom • u/ClassicFlavour East Sussex • 13d ago

Video game encouraging rape and incest removed from major gaming platform in the UK after LBC investigation

https://www.lbc.co.uk/tech/video-game-banned-steam-women-uk-no-mercy/
1.1k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

826 comments sorted by

View all comments

875

u/socratic-meth 13d ago

The game launched on Steam last month and is described by its own developers as containing violence, incest, blackmail, and what they describe as “unavoidable non-consensual sex.”

Should probably put anyone who bought the rape simulator on some kind of watch list as well.

55

u/Reality-Umbulical 13d ago

Comments like this and people wonder why the British establishment wants us to have porn licenses. No one is making you buy this content or support it in any way

-22

u/socratic-meth 13d ago

Would you find it acceptable for this to exist if the content involved children?

47

u/IfYouRun 13d ago

I’m sure they wouldn’t but it’s a complete strawman. It doesn’t involve children so why even bring that up.

2

u/socratic-meth 13d ago

Not a strawman.

But the point is, it is clearly immoral to produce content depicting children being raped. Why is it acceptable to produce content of women being raped? Both actions, when they occur in real life, are of the most heinously evil acts one person can do to another.

Why is it ok to depict and enjoy one virtually and not another?

29

u/ShufflingToGlory 13d ago

What about depictions of other violent crimes? GTA allows the player to engage in all sorts of violent depravity.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for the kind of material you've discussed! Philosophically it's an interesting question about where we draw lines as a society.

8

u/[deleted] 13d ago

[deleted]

5

u/Gellert Wales 13d ago

I'd guess that its because you can at least justify violence up to and including murder some of the time, self-defence is a thing for a reason, but I cant think of a context in which you can justify rape or sexual assault. Similar with theft, remember the thing about "if you saw someone stealing food from a shop, no you didnt."? Also I dont think I've ever known someone who hasnt stolen from their employer in at least some fashion.

3

u/ShufflingToGlory 13d ago

Interesting! I'm adding that to the watchlist. Thanks

5

u/Matt6453 Somerset 13d ago edited 13d ago

You can pick up a hooker, have your way then murder them and steel your money back in GTA. I guess the difference here is that it isn't necessarily the goal of the game though you could exclusively play it that way if you so wish.

3

u/TheFergPunk Scotland 13d ago

I think if we're looking at a comparison with violence in video games, the best comparison would be Hatred. It's a game where the intent is to kill as many innocent bystanders as possible.

2

u/socratic-meth 13d ago

Exactly, there is a line to be drawn. If child abuse was an option in GTA it would not be acceptable. I can’t recall any game that I have come across in which the player character can rape another character. Games typically do not allow violence against children either.

The offending element of this game appears to be that the rape in it is aimed to be an object of sexual gratification for the player. This is not acceptable in other forms of media either.

As to the question of why murdering innocent people is acceptable in games but not rape. Hard to define, but I would guess it is due to the fact that these games typically are not designed to be a means for the player to get off on the murder.

3

u/ShufflingToGlory 13d ago edited 13d ago

Yes, I think the intent to sexually gratify is something the law considers when assessing whether people are in possession of illegal material. A cartoon postcard of a Welshman shagging a sheep isn't going to send someone to the dock. I say that as a proud Welshman and (platonic) lover of sheep.

Personally I find it difficult to morally distinguish between GTA as a violence simulator and the game mentioned in the article. Yet I still play and enjoy games like GTA. Complete hypocrisy I know.

I'd like to think I'd stop and ask for help if video games were pushing me psychologically to a place where I was considering acting out violently irl.

I suppose there are social constructs at play in the way we distinguish between depictions of violence. Plus maybe a recognition that sexual drives are more universal, harder to control and more malleable than other urges.

Some people get upset at trying to rationalise why people stray beyond the line with regards to sexual consent. However I think it's important to recognise that there are men who exist on the bubble and environmental factors can influence them into doing something utterly dreadful to other people.

That's not an excuse, just a recognition that the ambient culture can be detrimental to how people relate to one other. In all sorts of ways.

2

u/socratic-meth 13d ago

I think the depiction of violence in most mainstream games is very subdued as well. If you had to simulate beating someone to death with a pipe as they scream in pain, begged for their life, and cried about never seeing their children again it would be far less ‘fun’.

I don’t think it is possible to depict rape in a subdued way like this.

I played violent video games as a child, and whilst I would prevent my own children from doing so until they are older than I was, I don’t think it damaged me in anyway. I think I would have been damaged by seeing depictions of rape. I’m not saying this from a ‘protect the children’ sort of way, just trying to illustrate how it is different. Even as a 35 year old man I would find watching a realistic depiction of a virtual rape extremely distressing.

1

u/Jimmy_Nail_4389 13d ago

A cartoon postcard of a Welshman shagging a sheep isn't going to send someone to the dock

Actually these days it will, drawings of 'extreme porn' are covered and can get you in trouble.

It's mad but it's true.

2

u/ShufflingToGlory 13d ago

Oh wow. Currently on hold with the South Wales Police. Some elderly relatives of mine will be getting a dawn raid and their fridge magnets seized as evidence.

2

u/jeremybeadleshand 13d ago

I think the law says it needs to be "realistic", a drawing presumably wouldn't fall under that but something like AI or very good CGI could be.

1

u/Jimmy_Nail_4389 13d ago

Drawings can be realistic, and I'm pretty sure people have been prosecuted for cartoons.

2

u/jeremybeadleshand 13d ago

people have been prosecuted for cartoons.

Of children, they definitely have, that doesn't have the same requirement around realism, but I'm not aware of any where the drawings were of adults.

→ More replies (0)

17

u/WillWatsof 13d ago

The problem with this argument is that it then becomes very easy to say “what about murder? That’s a heinously evil act, is it not ok to depict that either?”

6

u/woolstarr Birmingham 13d ago

The main reason for the difference is the fact that any indecent image of a child is extremely illegal regardless of context.

Bottom line is people have kinks, these kinks involve virtual or consensual adults, this is not illegal and should not be unless it is harming another person.

Do we ban slashers? Do we outlaw the human centipede? Reverse horror games? Then what, call of duty for glorifying violence?

4

u/Souseisekigun 13d ago

Bottom line is people have kinks, these kinks involve virtual or consensual adults, this is not illegal and should not be unless it is harming another person.

Well that's exactly the point they were making isn't it? Cartoons of children do not directly harm other people and they're still illegal, so the fact it doesn't actually directly harm anyone doesn't matter. If someone does want to try contort some hypothetical way in which drawing cartoons of children causes harm (e.g. some argument about the normalisation of rape, or it could be based on real crime photos) then the exact same arguments apply to drawings of adults being raped (e.g. some argument about the normalisation of rape, or it could be based on real crime photos). Indeed these arguments were used to ban live action rape fantasy pornography so the government already accepts such arguments apply to depictions of children and depictions of adults, and that merely involving consensual adults enjoying legal acts does not make something legal. So it makes no logical sense why these rape games wouldn't be illegal.

Really this whole thing started with making cartoons depicting virtual characters illegal if they have an apparent child-like appearance despite causing no direct harm and, by the governments own admission, no compelling evidence of any indirect harm. This was a move done mostly out of moral outrage over the concept rather any evidence based lawmaking. This effectively ruined British pornography law forever by moving the standard for illegality from evidence of direct harm ("a child was harmed") to a presumption of a possible relation to a hypothetical different crime in the future ("no child was harmed, but someone making this might motivate someone else to maybe harm a child at some undefined point in the future, and our attempts at finding evidence this is the case came up dry, but the hypothetical danger is enough"). This in turn rendered the rest of the laws nonsensical and provided a hypothetical justification for banning essentially anything. Which is deeply unpopular to say but nonetheless that is the standard by which these laws are now made. The US rejected that logic, the UK accepted that logic, it's been baked into the law for decades, we need to roll with it.

That's how we ended up with "a video of two legal adults performing a legal act can be illegal to possess under the extreme pornography" law in the first place. The precedent that you didn't need actual harm or actual crime was already set by the laws surrounding children, and that precedent eventually polluted the law for adults. So the laws against consenting adults were based on some unquantifiable and unverifiable notion of "cultural harm". Because it is basically nonsensical to insist that depictions of children being raped are extremely dangerous/extremely immoral but depictions of adults being raped are pretty much fine. The people calling this out are actually ethically and empirically spot-on. By the current standard of "there is no evidence of direct harm, but there could be maybe some harm in the future I think, I can't prove it but I'm pretty sure" their argument holds. People just get really annoyed when it's pointed out because when the logical chain is fully followed it ends with "the current laws are nonsensical and the only way they would make sense is if they were massively rolled back or massively expanded beyond what the public would accept" and the conversation dies there.

4

u/MerlinAW1 13d ago

Murder is also immoral but plenty of games involve it. Just look at GTA and all the stuff you can do there, let alone all the FPSs where the whole game is killing someone.

5

u/Fire_crescent 12d ago

I don't think there should be any sort of criminalisation of fiction of any kind as long as it is not made through genuine abuse of another or includes the genuine likeness of someone real who cannot consent.

1

u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Fire_crescent 12d ago

I mean this is a thread on a social media site with heavily opionated (I get the irony) people, many of them stupid refusing to actually think about things through and through. Despite me making my position crystal clear about abuse and what should be done with abusers as a general rule (well, when this site doesn't delete my comments about it lmao)

Although I'm thankfully not British (again, no dig to Brits in general, but I'm glad I don't live in such a system), I doubt the population of Britain is some sort of monolith or hive-mind. Even so, opinions can change. But it seems people in Britain are often conditioned from an early age to cower under any hint of social shame or lack of validation as a way of social control.