Collective Shout Interview: 'Steam's Sexual Violence Game Defenders Are Abusers in Real Life'

"Nobody has a human right to simulate and enact fantasies of rape and extreme violence against women," Caitlin Roper, the Campaigns Manager at Collective Shout, explained in a recent email interview with me. "Not being able to access rape games from popular gaming platforms is a minor inconvenience, not a violation of a person's rights. Payment processors get to determine if they do not want to host illegal content, including rape, sexual violence, incest, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and bestiality."

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Collective Shout, a small group from Australia, created a stir within the PC gaming community when it targeted Steam, the biggest storefront and platform, with a campaign that resulted in payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard threatening to pull their service from the platform if Valve didn't remove games depicting sexual violence against women.

Valve was forced to comply with the demands of the payment providers and changed Steam's policy to reflect the new changes. The response from the gaming community was nothing short of an uproar, with thousands raising concerns that a new precedent has been set - Valve having to bend the knee to payment providers and ban games that weren't previously against the platform's terms of service.

Following this decision and the widespread reporting of its impact on the Steam platform, a harassment campaign has been launched toward Collective Shout, which the organization is now engaging with lawyers, the FBI, and even the UN in response to threats that include pornography, sexual violence, and death threats. "It is clear many of the men defending their rape games perpetrate crimes of violence against women, because they are doing it to us right now," Caitlin tells me.

"I would ask those who view the loss of their rape games as censorship to consider if they are as concerned with women's basic human rights, and the glorification of male violence against women," Caitlin continued, when asked for her response to those who see Collective Shout's campaign and its impact as censorship.

While some gamers were upset that their games were now removed from the platform, many felt Valve's compliance with the situation highlighted an overreach by payment processors, particularly the moral policing of art/content under the threat of withdrawing payment processing support. Although some of the content is illegal in Australia, the campaign's effects have been global.

In a nutshell, Visa or Mastercard deemed the adult games as an elevated risk to their brands through association, regardless of their legality, hence their decision to threaten Steam with a global removal of their services.

"Our work focuses on combating the sexual objectification and exploitation of women and girls, so we focus our energy there," Caitlin Roper said when asked about the legality of the content it targets. "We call out this objectification and abusive depictions of women and girls, even where they are not illegal. Legality is not the defining factor; it is about documented evidence of harm to women and girls. We object to content that harms the status of women and girls, that objectifies and dehumanises them, regardless of legal or illegal status. In some cases, of course, the content we object to is illegal - as was the case here."

I spoke with Caitlin Roper, the Campaigns Manager at Collective Shout, and one of the organization's members, who pushed the campaign into the view of Visa and Mastercard, which resulted in Steam's policy being changed to account for the guidelines being enforced by payment providers, and ultimately, the removal of thousands of adult games from Steam.

Here is the full transcript of our interview, which was conducted via email.

Collective Shout Full Interview

Could you provide an introduction on Collective Shout and what the organization strives to achieve in general?

Collective Shout is a grassroots campaigning movement against the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture. For those less familiar with these concepts, sexual objectification is the process of reducing a person - often a woman - to the status of object or thing to be used by someone else, rather than a human being.

Our work is evidence-based, rooted in the global research which for decades has identified the sexualisation and objectification of women and girls as having significant negative outcomes for them. These include serious negative impacts on women and girls' physical and mental health, on the status of women (with objectifying portrayals leading both men and women to have a diminished view of women's competence, morality and humanity) and as a driver of men's violence against women.

We are a small team of women and have been operating for 15 years.

You can read more about our movement and objectives here:

Can you walk us through a timeline of events from Collective Shout's perspective (discovering the games, contacting Steam, payment providers, and what you and the organization are experiencing today?

You can find a timeline of events here:

What benefits for women have been achieved since the banning of these video games?

The most obvious benefits for women are that these major gaming platforms no longer host games glorifying rape and sexual violence against us, and that payment processors have set a standard that they will not facilitate payments on platforms that host such content. Survivors of rape and sexual abuse have been sent the message that the glorification of their abuse as entertainment for men is not acceptable. Some have written to us privately to express their deep gratitude. I hope these women feel more supported and emboldened today.

What types of depictions of women in games do you believe are most harmful, and how?

The global research has consistently found that depicting women as sexual objects, as things existing for someone else's sexual use, is harmful and contributes to the negative impacts I outlined earlier. But here, the games we objected to went much further than sexist and objectifying representations of women. They glorified men's sexual violence against women, portraying women as desiring and deserving rape and abuse. They depicted extreme sexualised violence and torture of women. I've been working in this space for 15 years, and I've encountered some pretty extreme material, and what I came across here was some of the worst I had ever come across.

How do you distinguish between sexual content that is exploitative vs. consensual fantasy?

Our objection is to content that glorified sexualised violence against women and children. As I reviewed the content tagged with rape and incest on Steam, I didn't come across anything that was intended as consensual violence. But this is a common pornographic trope - that women want or enjoy abuse, when in reality this violence and abuse is deeply harmful.

Critics argue this removes agency from women creating or consuming adult content. How do you reconcile protection with freedom of choice?

There is no greater removal of a woman's agency than rape. Media that glorifies sexual violence against women harms all women, regardless of whether a few women participate in its creation or consumption.

Do you believe that people who engage with the sexual content Collective Shout has advocated against are more likely to participate in it in real life?

Based on the response to our campaign - men engaging in criminal threats to rape and kill us, doxxing us, creating and distributing illegal image based abuse (porn made with our faces), sending us violent porn and illegal CSAM, it is clear many of the men defending their rape games perpetrate crimes of violence against women, because they are doing it to us right now. These men make clear that these misogynistic attitudes required to engage in and defend rape games are not limited to fiction and video games, but that they will and do perpetrate abuse against actual women in the world.

Are the concerns with the video game content about the legality of the content, or are they primarily ethical/moral concerns?

The rape and incest games we found would likely all be illegal in Australia. Those we reported to the Australian Classifications Board were geo-blocked, because they were illegal and were being sold illegally. The campaign calling on payment processors to stop processing payments on platforms hosting this content was also a call for them to enforce their own existing terms and conditions.

However, regardless of the law, the harms of glorifying sexualised violence against women and children are well-established, and we would argue that any company acting ethically would not host or profit from this content.

What would you say to those who have described this campaign and its impact as censorship?

Nobody has a human right to simulate and enact fantasies of rape and extreme violence against women. Not being able to access rape games from popular gaming platforms is a minor inconvenience, not a violation of a person's rights. Payment processors get to determine if they do not want to host illegal content, including rape, sexual violence, incest, child sexual abuse and exploitation and bestiality, which they had already determined. And so they should. I would ask those who view the loss of their rape games as censorship to consider if they are as concerned with women's basic human rights, and the glorification of male violence against women.

Violent content - games where players massacre people - is sold without issue, but sexual content is being targeted. Why do you think sexuality, particularly involving women, draws more scrutiny than violence?

I'm not sure I agree that violent content is sold without issue, as there has been much discussion about violence in media and video games and a connection to real-world violence. However, Collective Shout's work focusses on the sexual objectification and exploitation of women and girls, and how media, advertising and popular culture can contribute to this, normalise, justify or trivialise it.

The reality is that alarming numbers of women and girls experience sexual violence and abuse by men, and this is the cultural context in which this violence occurs - a culture that routinely portrays women as sexualised, objectified bodies for men's use and entertainment, and which normalises, excuses and glorifies violence against women.

If advocating for the removal of these games is based on the grounds that they are illegal, would you and Collective Shout agree to the removal of games depicting murder, or any other illegal activities?

Again, our work focuses on combatting the sexual objectification and exploitation of women and girls, so we focus our energy there. That said, we call out this objectification and abusive depictions of women and girls even where they are not illegal. Legality is not the defining factor, it is about documented evidence of harm to women and girls. We object to content that harms the status of women and girls, that objectifies and dehumanises them, regardless of legal or illegal status. In some cases, of course, the content we object to is illegal - as was the case here.

If not, how does Collective Shout distinguish between which crimes are acceptable to include in publicly accessible media, and which aren't?

Please refer to previous answers.

Should payment processors like Visa and Mastercard be capable of drawing a line between what transactions are approved and what are blocked, even if the content of that transaction is technically legal? Should the same standards apply to films, comics, or books depicting similar themes?

Please refer to previous answers.

What would you say to the thousands of developers who worked on these games that are currently legal, and have suffered financial damages due to their game now being removed from the platform?

I would say that if Steam and Itch io had been moderating their platform as they should have, there would have been no need to temporarily delist games to ensure they were not in violation of their policies. Our objection has always been clearly stated - rape, incest and child sexual abuse, which are already illegal and already captured in payment processors' policies. We are not responsible for or privy to the platforms' processes, and we stand by our call to payment processors not to process payments on platforms knowingly hosting and profiting from rape games.

I have seen Collective Shout advocate for government responses and international cooperation between law enforcement agencies over the harassment the organization has received following the removal of these games. Do you believe there will be any consequences for the people who are harassing Collective Shout and yourself?

We have been documenting evidence of criminal threats and the creation and dissemination of image-based abuse (aka "revenge porn") and making reports to law enforcement, including the FBI. The misogynistic abuse against us has been condemned by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem. We have sought legal advice. Beyond this, I cannot comment further.