For the past couple of days, the mainstream press had been quite rightly getting hot under the collar over a game called Active Shooter which appeared on Steam. The game emulated school shooting scenarios and was in particularly bad taste.
Valve was typically slow to react despite it being splashed all over the mainstream national press. Today Valve finally took action and finally removed the game from Steam. The developer in question is a known “troll”, as Valve calls him, having created games with asset flips and generally low-quality efforts. Valve explained the situation in a statement.
“This developer and publisher is, in fact, a person calling himself Ata Berdiyev, who had previously been removed last fall when he was operating as ‘[bc]Interactive’ and ‘Elusive Team.
“Ata is a troll, with a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation. His subsequent return under new business names was a fact that came to light as we investigated the controversy around his upcoming title. We are not going to do business with people who act like this towards our customers or Valve.
“The broader conversation about Steam’s content policies is one that we’ll be addressing soon.”
It’s quite stunning that games such as this can make it on to Steam and remain there for enough time to be noticed by national newspapers and
