Valve will not be releasing the controversial game 'Rape Day' on Steam

Valve has finally responded to the controversial release of the indie game known as "Rape Day". As far as weird indie games go, this one takes the cake. An indie developer who described himself as a "sociopath" wanted to release a virtual game which condones violence against women, causing an uproar in the gaming community.

Valve announced last year that they will have an "anything goes" policy as long as the games are not illegal or trolling. This liberal policy allowed for this indie developer to push this game. "Rape Day" was scheduled for an April release before Valve finally decided to can it and not release it on Steam.

A few months ago, Valve also banned games which attempt to sexualize children. Here's what Valve had to say about not publishing Rape Day:

Over the past week, you may have heard about a game called ‘Rape Day’ coming soon to Steam. 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.

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 judgement 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.

Weirdly enough, even though there is a moral responsibility from Valve not to produce such a game, there were still some uproars from the Steam community who stated this stands in the way of "free expression" and that any gaming content should be allowed, even if it features sexual violence.

Many of them claim that Valve allows the release of content that condones violence such as first-person shooters or other weird indie games on the platform. We don't know where Valve stands exactly because of this policy and there was no clear statement about what rules the controversial Rape Day had violated (even though it might seem obvious).

For now, the developer has stated that he understands why Steam did it and he will look for other ways to publish the game. If this becomes the next Epic Store exclusive, that will probably deal a huge blow to them.