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UK counter-terrorism unit demands Steam withdraw controversial shooter from sale
- medo-bear 2y ago[flagged]
- halJordan 2y agoFirst middle east flare up?
- ethernot 2y agoThis is irrelevant really. If they produced a game that was IDF killing Palestinians, well we might have the same view. Both are fucking tasteless and morally questionable.
- fakedang 2y agoWell, he quoted Black Ops 6, where you play an American going to Iraq to kill Iraqis...
- ethernot 2y agoYeah I’m not queuing up to buy that either. What happened to killing demons on Phobos?
- s5300 2y ago[dead]
- echoangle 2y agoI didn’t check the game but killing people isn’t all equal, do you kill civilians in Black Ops 6, and do you kill civilians in the banned game? The better comparison would be COD MW2 (with the famous „no Russian“ mission), which was controversial for exactly this reason.
- ReptileMan 2y ago>which was controversial for exactly this reason Only among stupid people. Most gamers yawned in boredom.
- cempaka 2y agoAccording to Israel's own figures 393 of the 1139 killed on October 7 were active duty military, so it's certainly possible to construct a game mission around it which does not involve actively hunting down civilians.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- somedude895 2y agoTo kill Iraqi soldiers, not murder civilians. The proper analogy to this would be if in COD you played a Blackwater operator during the Nisour Square massacre.
- wds 2y agoCompletely untrue. >In this game, the player does not shoot Israeli civilians, women, children, elderly, only soldiers.
- bruceb 2y ago@fakedang I saw your comment here:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41373440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41373440 If you ever write up anything about this, would love to read it. For my own interest and also trying to inform a 19 year old family friend about the realities of HR that she is studying at college right now. Want her to realize some of it will be automated away (or to do it herself) Didn't see contact in your profile, so random comment here!
- ReptileMan 2y ago>Both are fucking tasteless and morally questionable. A game has to be fun, not tasteful or moral. But I doubt that the gameplay is good. Political people making a statement suck at producing good art.
- tekkk 2y agoShow me a fun game you could make out of Holocaust and I'll be impressed. You can't look at a game purely from mechanics perspective. Nazi flag is just red, white and black in an intricate order but it produces an emotional response in people. You can deconstruct it at some level, but in the end you're just hopping over trip-wires.
- ReptileMan 2y agoBoth a survival horror could be set in camp - survive for as long as possible/eventually escape. And you can make a pretty decent simulation strategy of the V2 project and the stuff that was happening in Siemens, Krupp factories. The youngest person that can claim to have first hand memories of the nazi flag is what 85? If you are under 60 and the nazi flag produces emotional response in you, it is a good question to ask why? Hell the hammer and sickle were way worse than the swastika in every objective measure. It is only 30 years since they have been gone and people are starting to get indifferent to them
- medo-bear 2y ago> Hell the hammer and sickle were way worse than the swastika in every objective measure You are a moron
- medo-bear 2y ago> If they produced a game that was IDF killing Palestinians [bla bla ... usual double standards crap] From what I read, this is a game about Palestinian resistance killing IDF terrorists, not Israelis or Jews. Besides how many games are there where you kill "Ruskis" "Gooks" or "Arabs" and no one (well except an insignificant few) blinks an eye?
- talldayo 2y 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.
- riiii 2y agoThe 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 2y agoYeh, not really double standards. If you banned a game because anyone got killed in it, there wouldn’t be many video games…
- talldayo 2y agoBritain 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.
- whenc 2y agoPedantry: Cyprus is in the levant, and the UK has two sovereign areas there.
- ethernot 2y agoI think we can probably make do without a game that glorifies the 7th of October massacre. Or any as a matter of fact. I mean I pretty much made my mind up about that one already. It didn’t take a lot of effort.
- pessimizer 2y ago
- Aeolun 2y agoI 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 2y agoThey added in the Oct7 attacks?! Pretty abhorrent. That being said, I'm not sure what counter-terror objective blocking this game actually has.
- echoangle 2y agoPretty 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.
- lordofgibbons 2y agoAre people still seriously clinging on to the "video games cause violence" idea?
- wiseowise 2y agoI was skeptical about whole thing, but then getting Jewish pogroms in the middle of freaking Amsterdam in 2024 wasn’t on my bingo card. Some things are better be blocked for good. And before I get “but Counter-Strike!” - it is set in imaginary universe with made up factions.
- ricardobeat 2y ago> pogrom: an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group Not what happened in Amsterdam by any measure. Israelis started a row on the streets and got backslash from the local Arab population. No casualties.
- ethernot 2y ago[flagged]
- talldayo 2y agoI mean, the internet is not some auto-censoring regime that stops things from "being up" if they're offensive. You can go find some of the most reprehensible, bigoted and offensive media spanning hundreds of years on Internet Archive. Some of them are games too, and they may even espouse opinions you disagree with. It will only drive you insane if you believe the internet has anything absolute about it. The internet is not dictated by hasbara, there's no impetus to stay in lockstep with the Israeli media's opinion.
- ethernot 2y agoSteam is not the Internet really though. It’s a community store run by a large corporation which profits from everything that is sold. The internet just happens to be the delivery channel. This is like going to the supermarket and buying a product which is called “killing jews, the best of” and then when someone comes along and gets pissy telling them you’re anti censorship. It’s just tasteless morally questionable shite. If it was the other way around then people would be defending it similarly. It would still just be tasteless morally questionable shite.
- dmix 2y agoCOD 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.
- pessimizer 2y agoThe difference between this and CoD is that the government supports, advises, and might even invest in CoD. It's the right kind of killing.
- wiseowise 2y 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.
- wds 2y ago> based on playing as bad guys. You gave it away.
- wiseowise 2y agoWhatever’s your stance on the conflict, if you include Oct 7 as a playable mission AND you continue to play as the same guy throughout the game - you’re the bad guy. It’s one thing to create imaginary world of freedom fighter fighting against tyranny of oppressive world hegemony of certain state and it is completely different thing to include some sort of Sep 11 event and then paint it as resistance.
- dmix 2y 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.
- neom 2y agoThis 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."
- Aeolun 2y agoHuh, when you put it like that is sounds nothing more than reasonable.
- s5300 2y ago[dead]
- jl6 2y agoThere’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?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ricardobeat 2y agoThe 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.
- cempaka 2y agoPerhaps 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.
- wds 2y agoIt'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 2y agoThe first few seconds of his demo reel sum up the situation neatly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE83eJl6FUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE83eJl6FUE
- wds 2y agoVideo 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 2y agoAccording to post by YouTube, the game is banned in Pakistan as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE83eJl6FUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE83eJl6FUE
- amarcheschi 2y agoI 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 2y agolooks 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
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- throwaway325663 2y agoHere'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 2y agoYou 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.