UK counter-terrorism unit demands Steam withdraw controversial shooter from sale

https://www.eurogamer.net/uk-counter-terrorism-unit-demands-steam-withdraw-controversial-shooter-from-sale

by healsdata • 2 years ago

61 84 2 years ago

talldayo3• 2 years ago

"I do not blame Valve nor Steam, the blame is on the UK government and authorities that are pissed off by a video game," Nijm said. "On their flawed logic, the most recent Call of Duty Black Ops 6 should be banned as well. As you play as an American soldier and go to Iraq to kill Iraqi people. What I can say is that we see clearly the double standards."

Love him or hate him, he does make a principled point.

riiii2• 2 years ago

The UK ban is taking care of UK interestst. I don't think anyone would be surprised if Iraq would request a ban on BO6 in Iraq.

rimeice• 2 years ago

Yeh, not really double standards. If you banned a game because anyone got killed in it, there wouldn’t be many video games…

talldayo3• 2 years ago

Britain hasn't had a sovereign interest in the Levant for over a century. Their citizens deserve access to uncensored media to form their own opinions, even if the media is satire that would make Matt Stone and Trey Parker blush.

throw310822• 2 years ago

Sure, if you admit that the information and the entertainment available in one's country should align with that country "interests", then there is no doubt about it. However the West markets itself exactly as the place where such thing doesn't happen, so that's where the problem lies.

wds6• 2 years ago

So, should the UK be considered to be on the same level as Iraq for freedom of expression now, or?

ipaddr• 2 years ago

A principle point would be going after the Brazilian army but that would get him arrested. Safe principled point?

amarcheschi4• 2 years ago

Also, call of duty had and has ties with the army that sees is as a potential recruitment tool. [1]

Furthermore, in one call of duty a real event was narrated - although if in a fictional scenario - as if it was made by Russians [2], while in real life it was a us led attack on civilians, prisoners, and non fighting combatants. Google highway of death

Another article that has a broader view on the history of how defense and entertainment sector have ties [3]

[1] https://gamerant.com/call-duty-modern-warfare-recruitment-to... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/call-duty-modern-warfare-highway-de... [3] https://www.thenation.com/article/society/call-of-duty-penta...

guardiangod• 2 years ago

I literally played the 'Highway of Death' CoD:MW 2019 mission last night (before it crashed and I called it a night).

That game has no self-awareness at all. US good, Russians bad, must kill bearded brown people.

talldayo3• 2 years ago

while in real life it was a us led attack on civilians, prisoners, and non fighting combatants. Google highway of death

What COD did to this scene was reprehensible, but it's also important to understand the context for the real attack. The Highway of Death that happened in real life was a targeted strike on Saddam Hussein's retreating forces, most of whom were legitimate targets of war. At the time, Iraq sponsored the 4th largest military in the world, was being bombed in Baghdad, and most of their allies were starting to turn on them over outstanding debts. This pressure pushed Saddam to invade Kuwait, and Saddam's actions pushed the US to destroy as much Iraqi materiel as they could possibly damage.

The attack did happen on a civilian road, but only after the locals became aware that the highway was being used by Saddam's forces. The controversy mostly stems from attacks on a retreating force and the scale of the destruction, both of which are still up for debate on their effectiveness.

tdeck2• 2 years ago

From what I can tell in the screenshots all the targets in this game are military. I'd be curious if that's indeed the case.

amarcheschi4• 2 years ago

According to the steam description, only soldiers are killed.

It's clear they would have had to use children and not soldiers, had they made this about an Israeli soldier and not a Palestinian one (/s)

Aeolun3• 2 years ago

I came in prepared to defend the game and all, but then I read the subject matter, and just walked away thinking it’s a miracle it’s available anywhere.

Sure, he’s right that that’s double standards, but still.

0_____0• 2 years ago

They added in the Oct7 attacks?! Pretty abhorrent. That being said, I'm not sure what counter-terror objective blocking this game actually has.

echoangle2• 2 years ago

Pretty wild guess but maybe to prevent radicalization and recruitment? If you have a game like this and get the players onto your discord, you might move over some of them to do something in real life.

throwaway3256634• 2 years ago

I just went over a year worth of updates/release summaries and nothing suggest that Oct 7 attacks were added! If it's judging by this [1]:

The game drew the attention of terror police because it included scenes of players paragliding into an Israeli army base and killing soldiers.

That's the only connection to the Oct 7 attacks.

Also when you look at the graphics and gameplay, the 'combatants' are all in military style uniforms. Nothing even remotely suggest there are civilians involved.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/26/terror-polic...

alexwasserman• 2 years ago

"I'm not sure what counter-terror objective blocking this game actually has."

This, plus, what authority does Counter Terrorism Command over commercial enterprise in the UK?

Can any police force in the UK just arbitrarily block things for sale?

The article provides the CT comment:

"The CTIRU works closely with a range of technology, social media and online service providers, but we do not comment on specific content or any communication we may have with specific platforms or providers."

But nowhere do they state an actual law being broken, or law under which CT command can block things for sale.

I'm not a lawyer, so maybe this one is obvious, but this looks like authoritarian overreach.

Cotterzz• 2 years ago

My thoughts exactly. I was thinking it maybe genuinely unfair treatment, but then I read the developer's own description of the game. Anyone who describes their own work as 'basest of all time' is clearly going for shock value, and not as a protest, but as a selling gimmick. I don't necessarily agree it should be banned, I just... can't think of a downside.

dmix2• 2 years ago

COD famously did this for the airport scene. I see these Steam indie games like standup comedy, a lot of smaller/younger devs try hard to push boundaries to get attention in a sea of thousands of generic games coming out every month. It is sometimes where good ideas come from. Or maybe another analogy is porn where there's a million niche things for everybody's perverse interests.

pessimizer2• 2 years ago

The difference between this and CoD is that the government supports, advises, and might even invest in CoD. It's the right kind of killing.

wiseowise8• 2 years ago

COD famously did this for the airport scene.

Wasn’t it just an intro where you play as bad guys to provide background for the conflict? The game wasn’t fully based on playing as bad guys.

dmix2• 2 years ago

The game wasn’t fully based on playing as bad guys.

Well yeah... COD is a giant mainstream game where that line has to be from a socially acceptable shortlist of bad guys. Yet it still included a transgressive scene that upset people with calls to remove it. I remember the news heavily covered it. Great for marketing.

This is some small Steam game where you can put together some low effort campaign in an old game engine, spin it with some controversial topic and get frontpage on social media without having to appease a wider audience.

wds6• 2 years ago

based on playing as bad guys.

You gave it away.

jjmarr• 2 years ago

The point of "No Russian" is that the mass shooting was unjustified. You're an American who has infiltrated a terrorist group, and you go on a mass shooting with them to maintain your cover. Then, at the end of the mission, it's revealed that the terrorists knew you were an American, so they kill you and leave your body behind so that Russia blames the United States for the attack.

It's subversive because you think it's the typical "sometimes you have to do bad things to stop worse things from happening" plot.

But nope, committing atrocities because that's the standard of the "bad guys" is what allows terrorists to justify their existence and propagate the cycle of violence. The entire plot of the game is that individuals in the US and Russian governments use terrorism to justify even worse actions.

The game mentioned in the OP, on the other hand, portrays Palestinian liberation as requiring violence in order to match the actions of the Israeli military. The killings are not only justified but are necessary. This follows Frantz Fanon, who said:

At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.

In other words, getting revenge is inherently cathartic and the solution to a violent conflict is to ensure your side performs more violence and ultimately wins. It's a very different message to Call of Duty.

tdeck2• 2 years ago

The game portrays violence specifically against the Israeli military, which isn't analogous to that COD campaign in any case.

neom• 2 years ago

This is the description I lifted from steam: "Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a Third Person Action Game on which you play as Ahmad al-Falastini, a young Palestinian Student who was unjustly tortured and jailed by Israeli Soldiers for 5 years, had all his family killed by an Israeli Airstrike and now, after getting out from the prison, seeks revenge against those who wronged him, killed his family and stolen his homeland, by joining a new Palestinian Resistance Movement called Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

This game is greatly inspired by Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Insurgency Sandstorm, Max Payne and Goldeneye 007."

Aeolun3• 2 years ago

Huh, when you put it like that is sounds nothing more than reasonable.

jl6• 2 years ago

There’s got to be more to it than just “playing as the bad guys”. There’s at least one Battlefield game where you can play as the Nazis. But I don’t think that includes committing atrocities. If the next Battlefield game included Nazi-mode where you get to re-enact El Alamein from Rommel’s perspective, then it could be viewed as an interesting exercise in alt-history. However, if it included Nazi-mode with the objective of righteously industrializing genocide, then I expect it would be viewed as beyond the pale.

So I wonder which route this game takes. Is it a straightforward combat simulator with one team that happens to be labelled Palestinian, or can you press F to rape?

ricardobeat4• 2 years ago

The opening scene in their Steam page is Hamas fighters dropping down into Israel (flags visible) with paragliders.

I don't have a side here but that is in really bad taste, and not comparable to any other mainstream shooter.

cempaka2• 2 years ago

Perhaps it's in bad taste to Westerners who've imbibed a steady stream of atrocity propaganda about October 7, which avoids acknowledging that many of those killed and captured were legitimate military targets. By all accounts these are the antagonists presented in that mission in the game.

wds6• 2 years ago

It's comparable to most Call of Duty games at the minimum, many of which have maps in completely residential and commercial areas. Russian airport terminals, Ukranian apartment blocks, etc.

Also- considering the plotline of the game, in which the protagonist is fighting off an invading IDF military, is that flag you see Israel (Israel) or Israel (Occupied Palestinian territory)?

Missions across real places in Palestine

Seems like the latter, with no evidence for the former.

macleginn• 2 years ago

The first few seconds of his demo reel sum up the situation neatly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE83eJl6FUE

wds6• 2 years ago

Video game NPC killed using a sword- the bad, horrible kind of killing, versus if he had used an assault rifle or other firearm- the ethical, humane way of killing.

Winblows11• 2 years ago

According to post by YouTube, the game is banned in Pakistan as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE83eJl6FUE

amarcheschi4• 2 years ago

I find this disclaimer on the steam page particularly interesting:

All the Characters, Art and Storylines depicted in this game are purely the work of fiction. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The plot of this game is a fictional history inspired by real facts. Even the political and military groups depicted on the game are fictional. In this game, the player does not shoot Israeli civilians, women, children, elderly, only soldiers. Also in this game there are NO images of sexual content, illicit drugs, religious desecration, hate of speech against any group, ethnicity or religion, anti-Semitic propaganda against Jews, Nazi propaganda or boasting of any terrorist groups and / or other unlawful acts. This game only contains the virtual representation of the Palestinian Resistance Movement against the Israeli Military Occupation, which is officially recognized by the United Nations (UN). This game was approved to release by Brazilian's Government Justice Department, Age Rating Sector.

To be honest, the game looks ridiculous with its over the top scenes. It's like a reverse spec ops the line, except it's so exaggerated it's ridiculous rather than depressing

senectus1• 2 years ago

looks like it got pulled from the australian market already

An error was encountered while processing your request:
This item is currently unavailable in your region

Now I'm curious... might have to find it on the high seas just to have a look

throwaway3256634• 2 years ago

Here's quick summary:

- game exists (similar to it's current form) since 2022. No civilians. Military styled players. Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

- no one bats an eye

- developer adds a cut-scene of a military styled player paragliding into a base

- everyone looses their mind

locusm• 2 years ago

You can play this "style" of game in Project Reality, albeit against US Marines in Fallujah. It is a very fun map and led to other less COD like games such as Hell Let Loose and Squad etc.

UK counter-terrorism unit demands Steam withdraw controversial shooter from sale

Related Stories