Banned Game, VILE: Exhumed, Fights Back Against Narrow-Minded Prejudice
VILE: Exhumed is an FMV horror game by a solo female developer, Cara Cadaver, and handled by publisher DreadXP. It’s also a victim of the recent widespread ban of video games initiated by self-styled feminist advocacy group Collective Shout, even though it doesn’t feature anything that group is supposed to be targeting, particularly “sexual content with depictions of real people.”
VILE: Exhumed is made under Cadaver’s Final Girl Games imprint, and expands upon a previous version which is currently on Itch (another site recently subject to mass game bans). After being removed from Steam, DreadXP and Cadaver set up a dedicated website so gamers can download VILE: Exhumed for free.
“The game covers topics of assault, abuse, and entitlement, and uses a combination of FMV and practical effects to create images as horrifying as the themes,” Cadaver said on the site, vileisbanned.com. “This was never a secret. There are a lot of intense visuals in VILE: Exhumed, but there is no uncensored nudity, no depictions of sex acts, and no pornography whatsoever – which is one of the justifications bad actors are using right now to censor games.”
“By giving the game away, for free, to whoever wants to play it, I am doing the same thing I set out to do when I started working on VILE: Exhumed, a game about sexual assault, male entitlement, and misogyny. Taking back my agency.”
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Mass Censorship
Collective Shout is an Australian advocacy group against the objectification of women and the sexualization of girls. It’s been active since 2009 but really kicked things up a notch with a recent open letter to payment provider CEOs, including those from Visa and Mastercard.
“We the undersigned are writing to request that you cease processing payments on gaming platforms which host rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games,” it said. This followed a successful campaign to remove No Mercy from sale, a genuinely nasty piece of work that does indeed include the aforementioned topics.
The trouble is, in Collective Shout’s over-zealous attempt to channel the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and the UK’s Mary Whitehouse, it has a complete disregard for nuance. This saw over 500 games removed from Steam, including VILE: Exhumed, and a staggering 21,000 taken off Itch, although the latter platform is currently seeking to rectify this.
NSFW
Games tagged as NSFW were the main victims, even those that present sex in a positive light or feature LGBTQ+ content. VILE: Exhumed was one of a few horror titles targeted, with other horror game developers expressing concern on social media that this is just the start of more mass censorship.
However, if there’s a voice of reason in all this it’s actual gamers. For example, the majority of reviews on VILE’s Itch page praise it for tackling a tough subject with skill and art, with recent comments actively addressing the current controversy.
“I seriously don’t get how these websites could possibly think to enforce a punishment meant for games about glorifying rape and incest on a work of art that was clearly made with the opposite intention,” said user Predhulk.
“This sets a very dangerous precedent when it comes to tackling heavy topics, a precedent that I never thought would be set for indie games.”
Going Underground
One side-effect of the censorship that Collective Shout apparently didn’t consider is the avenues video game creators would take to ensure their work still reaches an audience. Steam and Itch may have been the main game marketplaces targeted, but as Cadaver and DreadXP have shown, there are other ways to share work and still accept money for it.
VILE: Exhumed is now available under vileisbanned.com, for free, and can be freely distributed under a Creative Commons license (as long as it’s non-commercial and not changed in any way). However, if gamers want to support Final Girl Games and DreadXP, they can make a donation via PayPal.
To further heighten the disconnect between what Collective Shout claims to stand for and how its actions define it, Cara Cadaver and DreadXP are donating 50% of profits related to VILE: Exhumed to Red Door Family Shelter, a charity that focuses on helping families, refugees, and women who are escaping violence.
