A computer game labelled "despicable" by the parents of recent US school shooting victims has been dumped from Valve's online game marketplace Steam.
Active Shooter was set to allow players to take on the role of a mass murderer, stalking through hallways and classrooms while slaughtering civilians and law enforcement officers.
Although the game's developer insisted it wouldn't "promote any sort of violence", it generated a great deal of outrage online - and a petition to have it cancelled has gathered over 220,000 signatures on change.org.
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Valve has since released a statement announcing Active Shooter will not be released on Steam, nor will any other titles from its developer of publisher - but doesn't cite the controversy as its reason.
"We have removed the developer Revived Games and publisher Acid from Steam. This developer and publisher is, in fact, a person calling himself Ata Berdiyev, who had previously been removed... when he was operating as '[bc]Interactive' and 'Elusive Team'," said Valve.
The company went on to label Beriyev a "troll with a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation."
A Steam user named 'Acid', acting as a spokesperson for Active Shooter online, questioned why the game was so controversial when other games that encourage the mass killing of unarmed civilians are still for sale.
Indeed, notorious 2015 game Hatred is still for sale on Steam, in which the player graphically murders as many random civilians as possible.
Its Steam page says: "You will go out for a hunt, and you will clear the New York outskirts of all humans with cold blood. You will shoot, you will hurt, you will kill, and you will die."
Ryan Petty, whose 14-year-old daughter Alaina in the Parkland school shooting in February, called Active Shooter "despicable" and "unacceptable" on Twitter.
David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland massacre who has since become a gun reform activist and the victim of sick right-wing conspiracy theories, rewteeted a message encouraging a boycott of Steam if the game was released.
Active Shooter was set for release on June 6.
Newshub.
