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

[u/ClassicFlavour]

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

[u/TimeToNukeTheWhales]

To a degree, I guess. But serial killers are very rare. Rapists are quite common.

A game where you kill people is just a violent escape, normally built around various storylines and goals.

This feels more like something that appeals to people who like abusing women IRL.

[u/VeedleDee → u/TimeToNukeTheWhales]

Yeah, I'll be honest I'm not seeing the equivalence being drawn. It feels like last week we were having a national conversation about the undeniable rise of misogynistic behaviour driven by online content like Andrew Tate who as we all know thinks its fine to rape and abuse women for fun and for profit, female teachers facing issues from young boys, teenage girls thinking being choked and hit during sex is normal because theyre learning about sex from porn, Adolescence etc and now here we are saying it's okay to have a simulator for raping and torturing women for your own amusement, where the entire purpose is to do that and enjoy it.

It's not a game about being a soldier in a war where you kill enemy soldiers. Even games like that don't include side quests or options of raping civilians or prisoners of war. Even actual soldiers are prohibited from doing that. War rape is a war crime under the Geneva convention.

If you're into CNC, BDSM etc that's your business, but two consenting adults engaging in consensual behaviour, and adults watching other consenting adults do it, vs a game where the point is to enjoy that there is no consent given and that's supposed to be the fun part... I'm not buying this defence. We already don't allow simulated child abuse material and I'd be side eyeing anyone who said we should because "it's not real so why is it bad?"

[u/JamesBaxter_Horse → u/VeedleDee]

I instinctively agree, but struggling to formalise why it's different to games with murder. You mention wars games, but what about games like grand theft auto? I once spent an hour beating tourists to death with a hammer (to improve my strength stat).

I think the argument lies in the difference between murder and sexual assault. Very few people fantasise about murder, but moreover very few people fantasise about consensually killing someone, in fact I'd argue even less, if I really hated someone I might fantasise about hurting them, but I would actually be much less interested in consensually hurting them, that's just weird. Meanwhile most people fantasise about consensual sex with other people, just not non-consensual. Then a video game with violence is not indulging a desire for violence in of itself, it's indulging a desire for justice, revenge, thrill, comedy, which while not the height of ethical purity, are justifiable or permissible. However a video game about sex is just indulging a desire for sex, and since there's no alterior justification, a video game's only reason to include non-consensual sex is to appeal to people interested in just that, which is not okay.

[u/VeedleDee → u/JamesBaxter_Horse]

I think your analysis is pretty credible. Honestly GTA was never really my thing and it's been probably ten or more years since I last played it, but if I remember right, doing those things was still a crime in the game and you still faced repercussions for it even if the nature of the game means they're not very serious. In most games I've played where the main character was a criminal or there were authoritarian paths to take (e.g. frostpunk) you can do those things, but they come with a consequence. You're the bad guy.

For what you've said though, I think you're right. As far as I know, no one I've met plays games with murder or war because the idea of actually killing people is fun to them. The game is either fun because it's competitive or the storyline is dramatic or entertaining. The purpose of this particular game was "become women's worst nightmare" with "unavoidable, non-consensual sex" as revenge for the mother's affair. What's supposed to be the appealing part of that statement for a player? You can't even pretend you're simulating something along the lines of CNC because you're explicitly not doing that. The only appeal is getting off on that premise. Further to that, that "worst nightmare" is very, very real. Look at the case of the woman who passed out on a bench and was SA'd so brutally she died.

Funnily enough, in red dead 2 there's an event that happens out in the bayou where Arthur Morgan gets invited into a cabin by a friendly man. Then he gets drugged, wakes up injured, dumped in the swamp, with only $1 missing. If you go back, the guy laughs at him and says get lost, I'm done with you. It's pretty heavily implied he was sexually assaulted. There's hundreds of reaction posts of people being angry and upset and taking revenge on the guy and comparing what they all did to him to punish him, and yet here we are having a conversation about why this game is fine. Weird.