Video Game in which The Player Perpetrates the Atrocities of Oct. 7th

A Request for Action

Dear friends,

I don’t often use this newsletter to ask you to take a specific action, but this morning I learned about a video game in which the player participates in the atrocities of October 7th. which is a thing so beyond the pale that I don’t even know where to begin.

If you or anyone you know plays video games—or if you just want to make an account on Steam for the single purpose of asking them to remove this game—please report this game as defamatory (which is the category you have to use for this type of content).

Here is where to find that mobile on the desktop version of Steam:

And here is where to find it on the desktop version:

As someone who teaches writing for video games, I am deeply aware of how they impact players’ understandings of the world and can even create identification with groups—real and imagined—to whom the player comes to feel they “belong” through gameplay.

Please help us get this game off the Steam market before it does even more harm than it already has.

(As a side note, I’d like to shout out GenCon, which has banned Games Connect—the entity that awarded this game several first place awards—for its blatant antisemitism. I wish the literary community was as supportive as the gaming community has been.)

Thank you. And for those of you who don’t play video games, maybe send this to a child or grandchild who probably does.