New Normative

New Steam Game Gay World Promotes Homophobia, Criminalizes Victims

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by

Nichole Johnson
in

Steam has been on a long decline ever since the good intentioned Greenlight program. A program that failed due to having no form of moderation aside from a voting system to approve games. In their attempt to fix this issue they made Steam Direct, so that if you want to get published all you have to do is have a cool Benjamin in your pocket. This of course takes all human interaction out the approval process and results in games like Gay World being allowed on the storefront.

In Gay World you are a cop in a future world where the majority of people are gay. As this cop it’s your job to arrest individuals for being straight and send them off to prison camps to be reconditioned into being straight. The method, forced sodomy. Based on the writing and design the game tries to pass itself off as satire or as something for gay people to enjoy.

Gay Conversion

This of course is disgusting in a lot of different ways. For one it completely glances over the issues of this scenario as it did actually happen to gay people by straight oppressors. Specifically, gay to straight conversion camps where they would try to recondition gay, trans, or any LGBTQIA folk into being cisgender or heterosexual. In ways similar to the game or worse. I can’t recommend reading about it, it’s disgusting that anyone would be forced to go through that.

The developer chooses to ignore these acts and say that victims would do the same given the opportunity. Unknowingly the creator admits that privilege is a thing and that currently LGBT people do not have as much power and if they did, they’d abuse it.

Honestly, I can’t think of a more literal definition of homophobia than this. It’s a game about the fear of gay people one day making heterosexuality illegal. It encourages people to fear this outcome, and expresses that being gay is something to avoid. It’s an actual fear of gay people, and the aversion.

Looking at screens you’re probably thinking “It’s not that bad, it’s all sprite art”. It’s the message the game has. The art and writing is just a means to get it passed off as “satire”.  If it’s not realistic people treat it with a lighter touch and if you take it seriously people make fun of you for overreacting. Attempted humor like this is just a bubble to practice ideas without being judged.

This game being on Steam is something that shouldn’t be ignored and Valve needs to take this as a big hint that they need REAL human intervention with publishing games.

Knowing what you do now, do you think this is OK? Should something that says “Don’t spread hate about straight people” be allowed to spread hate about gay people? I can’t think of much worse than saying victims would do the same given the chance.

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Nichole Johnson

Hello, I’m Nichole and I’m a 27 year old transgender woman. I’ve been gaming since I was 8 years old and currently have every major platform. You can find me on Xbox One, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch. I love co-op, souls-likes, roguelikes, action, and rpg games. I play a large variety of games though and I’m playing something different every week, it’d be easier to list the genres I don’t like. Despite my experience and work I consider myself more of a casual gamer because I feel the definition of hardcore gamer has changed over the past couple of years. If you want to watch me play stuff live you can find me on Twitch as QueenHellcat.

Comments

2 responses to “New Steam Game Gay World Promotes Homophobia, Criminalizes Victims”

  1. Eric | 🎮 The Black Beyond Avatar
    Eric | 🎮 The Black Beyond

    The developer has published a similarly homophobic game before called “boy next door” where you “Escape from the gay boys and bodybuilders and get it to the gay club at any cost.”

    Shocker: the developer is from Russia with very little info available otherwise…I’m guessing homophobic games are popular in Russia, and by presenting it in this way they can claim that it isn’t homophobic at all and slip past Valve’s approval system.

    Valve’s “system” is typical of their management and likely explains why games like this get easily approved. Valve’s management is famously “flat” (https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/239732/Gabe_Newell_shares_how_a_flat_structure_helps_Valve_succeed.php).

    Employees were free to greenlight any project in the greenlight days. This was great for me: my game never got a crazy amount of votes or publicity, but eventually some kind soul at Valve saw my game, thought it looked good enough, and pressed the button to approve it.

    So even in the Greenlight days, Valve was basically manually reviewing every game, probably ordered by votes but otherwise unfiltered. They even got in “trouble” in 2015 when an extremely homophobic game (kill the f******) was posted on Steam’s Greenlight and allowed to remain for a while before getting pulled.

    All it takes is one Valve employee to give an okay. There wasn’t likely discussion. There wasn’t likely a chat with Valve’s gay employees (assuming they have any). It’s just one (likely straight white male) pressing a button. Their system of approval hasn’t change very much — it remains very much an opaque, individual choice of individual employees.

    I’m a game developer and a survivor of gay conversion therapy. It bothers me that Steam is basically hosting anti-gay propaganda…

    It isn’t especially surprising, though, from what I know about the approval process and company culture/management.

    Well, I officially wrote too much. Cheers and good luck!

    Reply
    1. 💖Nichole💖 Avatar
      💖Nichole💖

      “I’m guessing homophobic games are popular in Russia”
      Homophobia in general is common in russia with Putin saying things like gay people don’t exist in russia.

      The greenlight system wasn’t great but it was certainly better than steam direct. At least with greenlight there was some sort of approval process. Direct you just need 100 USD to publish, a cost that anything could meet.

      The issue is heavily with valve itself, ever since steam became “The Store” they’ve stopped making games. Why make them when you make more money selling them? This has led to a sort of disconnect between them and the market and it’s users.

      I’m sorry you had to go through that and thank you for sharing your experience. People tend to forget that horrible stuff like this happened in just this generation and for some continue. The whole reason I thought to write this is because I remembered a trans friend went through it less than 10 years ago.

      Thank you for commenting. <3

      Reply

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