Steam, web gaming marketplace, opts to ‘allow everything’

Some of the titles available from the online video game marketplace Steam have names — like “Suicide Simulator” — that are fairly self-explanatory. Others have more innocuous titles that conceal the darker thrust of their game play: In the forthcoming “Kindergarten,” for instance, cartoon children are shot in the head by the school principal or hacked apart by the janitor.

It was a role-playing game called “Active Shooter,” however, that recently inspired broad protest, including condemnation from the parents of victims of the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla.

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Last week, Valve Corp., the software and technology company that operates Steam, canceled the scheduled release of the game, in which players prowl a school campus from the point of view of an attacker.

But far from backing away from controversial games entirely, Steam has now decided to “allow everything” on its platform, it said Wednesday, carving out disqualifying exceptions only for content it finds to be “illegal, or straight-up trolling.”

Doug Lombardi, a Valve spokesman, emphasized that “Active Shooter” would never have made the cut. “It was a troll, designed to do nothing but generate outrage and cause conflict through its existence,” he said in an email, noting that the game’s developer, Acid Publishing Group, had also been involved in “numerous misrepresentations, copyright violations and customer abuses.”

In its statement, the platform framed the new policy as a difficult decision certain to disappoint everyone at one point or another. “The Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don’t think should exist,” it said. “Unless you don’t have any opinions, that’s guaranteed to happen. But you’re also going to see something on the store that you believe should be there, and some other people will hate it and want it not to exist.”

Valve, which prides itself on being “boss-free since 1996,” arrived at the policy change collectively. Lombardi said a “large group” was involved in the decision-making process but couldn’t say exactly how many people that included.

“We don’t all agree on what deserves to be on the store,” the company said. “So when we say there’s no way to avoid making a bunch of people mad when making decisions in this space, we’re including our own employees, their families and their communities in that.”

By Thursday evening, the game “AIDS Simulator,” a creation of the same developer and publisher as “Suicide Simulator,” had been removed from the Steam store.

“Welcome to Africa, you’ve got HIV!” read a summary of the game. “Now you’re mad and want to kill all Africans that gave you AIDS to get revenge.”

According to the website steam-tracker.com, provocative titles began to vanish from the platform at a greater clip late Thursday. Valve did not immediately respond to questions regarding the fate of those games.

Louis Lucero II is a New York Times writer.