The Worst Argument I’ve Heard in a While, and Why It Almost Works
Steam pulled it before it ever launched, which is arguably the most interesting thing about Rape Day—that a platform happy to host thousands of games where you kill everything in sight drew a line specifically here. The game itself is a visual novel: click through static images, play a serial rapist exploiting a zombie apocalypse to assault and murder as many women as possible. Technically it’s nothing. Cheap CG, a few hundred screens. The controversy was always the product.
The anonymous developer gave interviews. He talked about growing up on horror novels, moving on to psychological thrillers, loving zombies. He cited Mr. Brooks and Nightcrawler as influences—films that lock you inside a predator’s consciousness and refuse to let you leave. He said he loves porn. He wanted to combine everything he cared about into one game, and this is what came out.
His actual argument, stripped of the shock, goes like this: You can’t ban rape in fictional stories without doing the same with torture and murder.
Murder in fiction has become unremarkable; rape hasn’t gotten there yet. He expects historians will look back on Rape Day the way they look back on early Grand Theft Auto controversies, or the first nude scene on television—moral panic that delayed the inevitable. And the argument isn’t crazy. I’ve long since made peace with games exploring violence, cruelty, the inside of a murderer’s mind. That’s what storytelling does.
But there’s something he’s glossing over. Grand Theft Auto is about many things—crime, ambition, American mythology. Its violence is incidental to something larger. Rape Day has one mechanic and one goal and no ambition beyond the provocation. The comparison to Nightcrawler is particularly dishonest: Gilroy’s film implicates the viewer by refusing catharsis. Rape Day is pure catharsis. That’s the whole pitch.
Whether something this ugly deserves a place in any marketplace is a question I don’t have a clean answer to. Art can be genuinely monstrous, and some monstrous art matters. This probably doesn’t. But the reflex to ban is its own problem, and I’d rather sit with the discomfort than pretend the question resolves cleanly. Steam has made its call. Anyone still looking has to go directly to the developer.