Rape Day will not be distributed on Steam

Earlier this week Valve came under fire for a game called Rape Day game appearing on Steam, with a discussion emerging in the days since regarding their guidelines and the gaps that let such controversial content get past, and now the company has released a statement on the Steam blog about the game.

"Today we've decided not to distribute this game on Steam. Given our previous communication around Who Gets To Be On The Steam Store?, we think this decision warrants further explanation," Valve explains.

"Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary—we simply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judgment call about any risk it puts to Valve, our developer partners, or our customers. After significant fact-finding and discussion, we think 'Rape Day' poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won't be on Steam."

"We respect developers' desire to express themselves, and the purpose of Steam is to help developers find an audience, but this developer has chosen content matter and a way of representing it that makes it very difficult for us to help them do that."

This might have been the expected response for many, but there is still no mention of the guidelines and how they can be changed moving forwards as a preventative measure for this situation happening in the future.

As you might have expected, this statement has come with a lot of comments on the post itself and elsewhere. What happens to the game remains to be seen, but Steam has been praised for acting swiftly and removing it from their platform.

Do you appreciate this statement?