After the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department two weeks ago, the Black Lives Matter movement saw an outpouring of support from the community and various corporations. Many game publishers and developers stood in solidarity with the black community, but one very important platform holder has remained silent: Valve. Due to this silence, a few indie devs are now removing their games from sale on Steam in a sign of protest.
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Julian Glander of Glanderco (Art Sqool), Dan Sanderson of danthaigames (First Winter) and Gabriel Koenig of Ghost Time Gab had their games delisted on Steam while giving statements on Twitter for the reason why.
Glander wrote, “It’s clearer than ever that the owners of this platform feel beholden to a base of angry white male gamers. This makes me especially sad because I feel that some of these people are the people who most need to hear the message of Black Lives Matter.”
Koenig explained how the decision wasn’t an easy one and that the removal of Ghost Gab’s titles would be costing them a fairly steady revenue stream. “I’ve been making ~$1000 a month in sales lately, and leaving that behind made me feel uncomfortable,” he wrote. “But if I continued to profit from their store I’d be complicit with their silence on hate.”
Sanderson stated that while his title wasn’t making much money anyway, he removed it for the principle of the matter. “First Winter makes no money anyway but still. It’s the principle. And considering the shocking shit going on in London today, had to do something.”
Valve has yet to respond to these removals and it probably won’t. It is a developer’s choice of whether or not they want their games to be listed on Steam. If they have properly requested removal and been granted such, then that’s all that needs to be said. You can draw whatever conclusion you want from Valve’s silence on the matter.
If you do wish to help the Black Lives Matter cause, we at TheGamer have put together a list of charities that are accepting donations. You can find that here.
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