BREAKING NEWS! Steam, the Walmart of online video game distribution, with over 35 million users who are children and teenagers, just contacted several videogame developers asking them to cover sexually graphic content in their games on Steam or face delisting. This sudden action by Valve, parent company of Steam, comes after a two-year aggressive campaign by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, including the listing of Steam on the 2018 Dirty Dozen List.
Many games on Steams platform promote themes of sexual violence, exhibitionism, and rape and depict nudity and graphic sex acts.
When videogames include sexually graphic and degrading themes the user is not only a voyeur but an active participant in staging the scene.
As our society suffers from the consequences of campus sexual assault, military sexual assault, and rising child-on-child sexual abuse, we see that normalizing the sexual use (and often abuse) of others in videogames is irresponsible on the corporate and social level.
We thank Steam for their leadership in working to change our #MeToo culture in which sexual violence in rampant and normalized. Your corporate leadership is a major step in creating a world free from sexual exploitation.
Thank you @Steam_Games for saying no more to sexual violence how-to videogames on your platform. This is a real solution to our culture's #MeToo problems. Stop normalizing rape, sexual violence, incest, trafficking. Share on XWe thank the many grassroots activists and leaders who have spoken up to demand a change to Steams policies and enforcement practices with us these past two years. We especially thank you for your help in our most recent grassroots campaign, which started May 10! Your voices have been heard.