Acid Software’s Active Shooter is considered by most gamers to be an asset flipped version of the original Counter-STrike, allowing you to play as either an active shooter or as the SWAT forces sent to stop him. Well, recently Paypal barred payments from being made through their service to purchase Active Shooter because they claim that the game promotes violence, which goes against their terms of service.
In a statement sent to the Associated, the company explained…
“PayPal has a longstanding, well-defined and consistently enforced Acceptable Use Policy, and regardless of the individual or organization in question, we work to ensure that our services are not used to accept payments for activities that promote violence,”
This explanation from Paypal left a lot of gamers scratching their heads, mainly because you can use Paypal to pay for Steam games such as Counter-Strike or Call of Duty or Battlefield games, all of which also contain first-person shooting violence identical to Active Shooter.
As some gamers pointed out, what makes Active Shooter a tool for promoting violence anymore than the “No Russian” level from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? Or what makes Active Shooter worse than Postal or Hatred?
And if a game like Active Shooter promotes violence simply by allowing players to embody the role of an active shooter, does that mean games like Call of Duty: WW2 promotes gamers to become Nazis? And does that also mean that games like Super Mario Odyssey that allow you jump on the heads of animals turns kids into animal abusers? And does that mean that every fighting game where you can only win by beating your opponents face into a pulp also promotes violence?
The Associated Press doesn’t detail what “promotes violence” means in context of Active Shooter, and Paypal doesn’t bother to offer an explanation.
Meanwhile, Acid announced via Twitter that they’re looking into getting the issue fixed so that gamers can purchase Active Shooter directly from their website.
We are experiencing few issues with #Paypal now. So if you are having issues with purchasing #ActiveShooter from the Acid Software, please wait for us to resolve the issue.#QuitCensoringUs #ActiveShooter #FreedomOfExpression #WeWillBeBack
— ACID (@ACID_WTF) June 19, 2018
The developers also noted that they’re looking into refunding gamers for the purchase of Active Shooter but they’ve asked gamers to “please wait”.
All of the funds from Active Shooter are frozen. We will try to refund everyone as soon as possible. Please wait.
Meanwhile, feel free to support directly by donating here:https://t.co/cCRSosJV37
Thank you!! #ActiveShooter #GameDev #UndergroundGaming
— ACID (@ACID_WTF) June 21, 2018
At the moment you cannot purchase Active Shooter from the official website, as an update notes that it’s “out of stock”.
The game is currently still in Early Access after it was removed from Steam due to the publisher violating Valve’s terms of service by gaming the review system and by antagonizing customers.
Russian rep Ata Berdyev told the Associated Press that Americans are basically trying to censor them from publishing the title…
“[…] seems like everyone in US is trying to censor us, whilst not explaining what exactly we are violating.”
Some commenters from around the web actually agree.
America’s broken culture shouldn’t be an obstruction for developers to explore their own creative endeavors, no matter how crude or distasteful.
Nevertheless, if you want to try out a demo for Active Shooter you can do so by visiting the official website.
(Thanks for the news tip Migi)
