In an example of where the economy meets public policy – but where neither side really saw the intersection coming – one of Washington State’s leading game companies is releasing a virtual reality game that allows players to be active school shooters.
Valve, a Bellevue-based company founded by Gabe Newell, will launch its new game called “Active Shooter” on June 6th. The virtual reality game will let players enter into active shooting simulations, either as the shooter or as a responder to the shooting. Valve markets the school shooting simulation with the language “slaughter as many civilians as possible.”
The game has drawn pushback from friends of Valve, including other online gaming organizations co-located in their building. Rahul Sood is the CEO of Unikrn, an e-sports company, who in a tweet thread suggested the gaming company should have more social responsibility.
Wow #Valve won’t even return ONE phone call about how to fix underage and illegal skin gambling on their platform but they’re happy to let the game Active Shooter (where you can pretend to be a school shooter) on their marketplace.
Do better guys. This is embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/AcJKAv5GZ6
— Rahul Sood ???? (@rahulsood) May 26, 2018
A petition at Change.org asking Valve to not launch the game now has 56,000 signers as of Tuesday morning.
Valve’s founder, Newell, has been a large but sporadic donor in Washington State politics. While he has only given intermittently to candidates and causes in Washington State, most of which have been Democratic, he donated $100,000 in funds to the 2012 campaign to support charter schools.
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