Thursday, May 7, 2015

LGBT Murder Game Removed From Steam Greenlight


Update (May 8):
Upon finding out that it was Skaldic Games behind this, I realized that last year I added some of their other products to ScummVM and updated the ScummVM wiki with a page about their company.  I really wish I could take back those few lines of code I wrote to support their products, and I'm sure this goes without saying, but because of this game and because of their attitude toward the situation, I definitely don't support the company, I don't intend to support any of their products from here on out. I've experienced the brutality of simply being LGBT myself. I was burned, beaten, urinated on, drugged, held down, had my clothes forcibly removed, and sexually assaulted. The horror LGBT people face is real. Trolling like this is awful.

I don't normally post about stuff like this, but since I just posted about my game that tries to paint transgender people in a positive light, I think it's important that I speak out against games that do the opposite. Planet Transgender reported that a game that had gameplay centered around the murder of LGBT people was available on Steam Greenlight for a few hours before it was pulled for violating Steam's Terms of Service. The objective of the game was to murder gay people, which would give you points, and transgender people which would give you more points while avoiding straight people, which would subtract points from your score.

Considering that The Transgender Day of Remembrance, which was created to honor those killed as a result of violence towards transgender people, still exists, and being openly gay, bisexual, or transsexual is still punishable by death in many countries, murder of LGBT people still happens depressingly often in today's world (and, even in the United States, convictions of people who murdered LGBT people still are sometimes dismissed on technicalities), so making light of this is more than just being in poor taste. Products such as these really shouldn't be allowed to exist on mainstream outlets, so I'm glad Steam removed it. Although, it's maddening that they allow products to go through unfiltered through Steam Greenlight in the first place.

A lot of people who were going to be working on the full game, in which this minigame was to be, have severed ties with the developer. The Irish metal band, Cruachan released a statement saying they were shocked to be associated with the anti-LGBT game, the full game of which was slated to feature music by Cruachan, and the lead singer of the band and his girlfriend were going to be voicing characters in the game. After the greenlight debacle, they told Skaldic Games that they want to be removed from the game, as well as all music by and references to Cruachan.

Lori Beth Denberg, who was also going to voice a character, also severed ties with them after finding out about the game, and so did Kerem Erdinc. And, Rachel Lally, who was also going to be voicing a character, also severed ties with them and posted her entire email to them in which she asks to be removed from their game.

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