Game developer Valve's "Greenlight" project -- in which developers can, for a $100 fee, make their work available through the popular Steam downloadable store -- is coming under fire for failing to stop the game "Kill the Faggot" from launching, Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech reports.
On its face, the game clearly violates Steam's terms of service, which prohibit "[t]hreats of violence or harassment, even as a joke." The game was designed by a self-styled "Christian shoe promoter" from California named Randall Herman, and in it players are encouraged to shoot homosexuals.
They are rewarded for every homosexual they kill, and penalized for any straight person they accidentally clip. The homosexuals can be identified not only by their caricatured attire, but by what they say as they cross the screen, including "Can I put my wiener in your butt?" and "I just dropped the soap!"
Game reviewer Jim Sterling downloaded the game before it was pulled it from Steam under the impression that it was satire. In his video review -- available below -- he managed to play the game for less than a minute before becoming exasperated. "Where is the fucking satire?" he asked. "What is is satirizing?"
The reason Sterling found it difficult to discern what the game was satirizing was, it turned out, because it wasn't satirizing anything. According to Herman in a statement release on Skaldic Games' website, "[t]he reason behind this particular game is because of how tired I am of people being overly sensitive and how easily offended people are by every little thing, especially with LGBT issues."
"I made this game just to piss off those people that are way too overly sensitive, which includes straight people," he continued. "These people that think if you are even remotely homophobic, you are 'hateful' and a 'bigot,' and do everything they can to destroy you in every vicious way possible."
To combat "these people" who are "overly sensitive" about LGBT issues, Herman made what he believed was a brave decision -- creating an offensive video game. "I decided to go down a path that most developers are afraid to go down," he wrote, "to piss these people off by making the most overly offensive game possible to these idiots to prove a point."
Watch Sterling's critical review of the game below via YouTube below.
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