Google has killed off "Google Shoot View," a first-person shooter video game based on Google's Street View mapping product. The game used Google's Street View database of 360 degree street-level photography, and imposed an automatic rifle sight and some sound effects on top of it.

Users could explore neighborhoods in the same way you can on Street View, and then shower the sidewalk with automatic gunfire.

The game was created by Pool Worldwide, a Dutch digital ad agency. Creative director Erwin Kleinjan told us this morning that Google pulled their right to use the Street View application protocol interface -- the permission software that allows third parties to incorporate Street View into their own products -- due to a violation of the terms of service. "We received an email that apparently it was infringing on their terms of use, so we put the rest of the site down," he said.

The game only existed from Friday through late Monday evening. "At peak moments there were like 3,000 visitors per minute. It also crashed our web server," Kleinjan said.

It also attracted criticism: Some B.I. readers thought it was tasteless and normalized the idea of shooting unarmed people in the street. One commenter said:

"30 million disaffected angry people now have a school shooting simulator, except it's not limited to schools."

VentureBeat noted:

"The game lets you go around killing pedestrians and police officers, who are real people unwittingly captured by Google’s cameras."