400 video games with rape, incest, child abuse pulled from Steam

More than 400 games depicting rape, incest and child abuse have been pulled off of a gaming platform after action from an Australian non-profit.

More than 400 games depicting rape, incest and child abuse have been pulled off of a gaming platform after an Australian non-profit called on payment processors to cut ties.

Collective Shout, an Australian non-profit that fights the sexualisation of women and girls, shared an open letter on Monday calling on payment processors to cease ties with gaming platforms such as Steam.

Steam, a digital storefront for gaming owned by American company Valve Corporation, was hosting close to 500 games that depicted rape, incest and child abuse material.

MasterCard, PayPal, Visa, Paysafe Limited and Discover were some of the payment processors named in the open letter.

“A Collective Shout team member has conducted extensive research using a Steam account set up for this purpose. She has documented content including violent sexual torture of women, and children including incest related abuse involving family members,” the open letter read.

Collective Shout has called for payment processors to end their relationship with places like Steam, which also hosted the game No Mercy.

“These games endorsing men’s sexualised abuse and torture of women and girls fly in the face of efforts to address violence against women. We do not see how facilitating payment transactions and deriving financial benefit from these violent and unethical games, is consistent with your corporate values and mission statements.

“We request that you demonstrate corporate social responsibility and immediately cease processing payments on Steam and any other platforms hosting similar games.”

Melinda Tankard Reist, the movement director of Collective Shout, told news.com.au the push came after she appeared on a television show in the UK to discuss the game No Mercy — a game where players assumed a persona of a man who sexually assaulted women as a punishment for his mother’s infidelity — that Collective Shout had gotten pulled off of Steam in April.

“The reporter mentioned she’d come across other related games so we did a deeper search and discovered almost 500,” Ms Tankard Reist said.

“These games features rape, sexual violation and extreme torture of women and girls. They also include incest-themes. Players can rape vast numbers of women including family members. Women are represented as deserving of punishment.

“The game descriptions are open about ‘scenes of non-consensual sexual activity’ and ‘Sexual scenes with a woman during conversation or while sleeping’.

“In one game ‘men abduct women, hold them hostage and rape and sexually torture them’. “Another says ‘The captured women will be violated every day … They will not stop. There is no human rights at all’.”

A screenshot on what Collective Shout's research found.

Following the recent action, there are now 27 incest games and 55 rape themed games remaining on Steam. Steam has also updated its rules on what content can be published on the service.

In addition to sexually explicit images of real people, defamatory statements and content that exploits children, a new clause reads; “Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.”

news.com.au has contacted the Valve Corporation for comment multiple times.

When approached about the open letter, a MasterCard spokesperson told news.com.au: “We have zero tolerance for illegal activity on our network. When specific instances of potentially unlawful or illegal activity are identified, we investigate the allegations so that the appropriate action can be taken.

“We have not received the evidence or materials noted in the letter but will investigate the claims upon receipt.”

News.com.au understands that Steam does not directly connect to the MasterCard network but use “acquirers” as intermediaries. Acquirers are responsible for conducting due diligence on customers.

PayPal and Paysafe gave similar comments to news.com.au, with the latter stating it was investigating concerns that were raised.

Since Collective Shout’s open letter, the organisation has been inundated with abusive commentary online — including rape and death threats. Some went so far to call Collective Shout’s act a “declaration of war”.

Originally published as 400 video games with rape, incest, child abuse pulled from Steam