There are two decisions over the past two weeks that have brought to light the incredible lack of foresight from two parties that should have known better. They both have to do with a medium of content that is objectionable in the most heinous sense at the very slightest. By now the story of how THQNordic’s PR Manager Phillip Brock accepted an invitation to do an AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread on the image board 8chan has surely reached your ears. Shoutout to Mark, by the way. If you have been on the Internet for any lengthy period of time, you know it’s parent board 4chan. One of the internet rules even is that you don’t mention one of 4chan’s boards.
During the GamerGate controversy, 4chan did an unlikely thing: it banned GamerGate discussion. This unprecedented move caused several 4chan users to create a new site, 8chan, with the intent to foster total and complete freedom of speech and topics. This laissez faire attitude led it to become a hive of scum and villainy that would make even the populace of Mos Eisley look like a church choir. Google, at one point, even unlisted them out of concerns of content featuring abuse towards children.
This wasn’t some minor mistake either. The content of the AMA should have been an immediate cause for realizing that this was a mistake. Instead of stopping the AMA, Brock did the only thing that could have made the situation worse. He went on with it, answering even the some disgusting of inquiries.
8Chan User: “Where the big tiddie lolis at?”
Brooks: “you got them already we’d say.”
The backlash over Twitter and outlets was virtually unanimous; “How did you ever think this was going to be a good idea.” Within twenty-four hours Brooks had apologized, taking full responsibility and claiming, “I personally agreed to this AMA without doing my proper due diligence to understand the history and the controversy of the site, I do not condone child pornography, white supremacy, or racism in any shape or form.”
Earlier this week, the CEO of THQNordic addressed the issue in a formal letter, echoing Brooks statement. Yet, in neither statement is there a crucial and important part of a message of this kind. They never condemn 8chan, its disgusting content, nor their tacit endorsement of it. They claim ignorance despite the easily available information about the site and its history. But they weren’t the only ones to make an error like this, an error the geographical size of Texas.
Valve’s Steam, the largest marketplace for gaming in human history, has had enough controversy to fill the content of an entire University degree program on how not to mess up. Last year, it was called out for inconsistent rulings on content for games that depicted violence, sex, and nudity in that it only did so for the latter two. It was highlighted after a game glorifying the school shooting epidemic in America made its way to the platform. After all of this, Steam announced its content policy…
“We’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling,”
However, earlier this week, a game whose page is under review for Steam came up on social media. This game is from developer Desk Lamp and is called Rape Day
Rape Day is a visual novel described in the following: “Rape Day is a game where you can rape and murder during a zombie apocalypse.” It included in its updates that the contents of the game would also have content regarding killing a baby. After being found out, a petition went around to request Steam ban the game, along with several outlets producing articles and videos describing the game to their larger audiences, which only perpetuated the controversy. Eventually, Valve responded,
“Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary, we simply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judgement call about any risk it puts to Valve, our developer partners, or our customers. After significant fact-finding and discussion, we think Rape Day poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won’t be on Steam.”
Nowhere in Valve’s description did they say that they found the content of the game unbecoming, gruesome, or having gone far enough to warrant being denied through the approval process the moment someone laid eyes on it. Instead, they cited monetary reasons as to why they found it to be of risk. This was combined with the vague policy considerations made on other games, such as eroge anime-style visual novels, often being left in limbo without knowing if their games are going to be removed.
There’s no doubt that as the industry continues to grow and evolve, these awkward growing pains of the artistic medium will continue to come to the forefront. But it is imperative for industry leaders to ensure that they themselves both prevent autocratic abuse, while ensuring their platforms refrain from hosting and participating in problematic content.
For more from Handsome Phantom on the THQNordic listen to the HP Podcast.
