Last week, Valve had to remove the controversial Rape Day game on Steam after receiving a lot of complaints from the game community. However, rather than remove the game immediately because of its unaccepted content, Valve spent a while researching after reach its final decision. The reason for removing the game is, not because of its sexually assault story, but for it  “poses unknown costs and risks”.

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A screenshot of Rape Day

It seems that Valve stops selling this game merely is to appease critics rather than it is wrong to do so. The ethical responsibilities here is underestimated and Valve is very careless to control what is on their Steam or they don’t have enough ability to do that.

This is not the first time Valve has acted like this. When they are accused of their negative effect to the game market: if your game is not accepted by Steam, it is hard to get succeed, Valve allowed any game to be on Steam if they are not illegal.

Valve's executives Erik Johnson wrote a policy last year that Valve’s value is that everyone has the right to create and consume what they want and games on Steam don’t affect their value.

However, Valve has the responsibility for what release on Steam. Additionally, despite the right to create and buy any game on Steam, selling such a game is not a good thing to do. Moreover, Valve should have a clearer policy content to prove game like Rape Day has no place on Steam. If they don’t do that, games like this will appear on Steam more and more and it is not fair to other developers.

Besides controlling sensitive game loosely on Steam, Valve has to face with the competition of Epic Games Store. Recently, Epic has stolen Metro Exodus from Steam when release day is coming by its attractive revenue-sharing. Although everyone who pre-ordered Metro Exodus can play it on Steam, Valve said that Metro Exodus deal is unfair to their customers. Obviously, Metro Exodus’s action is unacceptable but Valve hasn’t done anything about it.

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Metro Exodus

Valve always want to create Steam like a utility like an internet. However, dealing with developers is another story. Things don’t get flexible like Steam if you don’t own one of the successful games in the world. Valve makes people think about a company work for money even it is not true. Valve’s problem now is Valve. If they don’t change themselves, their position will become weak and weaker.