New School Shooting Video Game Gets Slammed Online By Victims’ Parents

With all the tragic news about school shootings, it comes as a shock that a video game company has come out with an active shooter game that seems to glorify the crime. Understandably, the said game has been met with outrage by many, especially the parents of shooting victims themselves.

The simulation game entitled ‘Active Shooter’ has been created by Revived Games and it includes “harrowing ‘objectives’ and a count for civilians and police killed,” according to a Unilad report.

Apparently, Active Shooter allows players to be the good guy or the bad guy.

In the game’s description on the Steam website, we read:

“Active Shooter – the Simulation. Pick your role, gear up and fight or destroy! Be the good guy or the bad guy.

“The choice is yours! Only in “Active Shooter”, you will be able to pick the role of an Elite S.W.A.T member or the actual shooter.

“Lead your team, extract civilians and neutralize the shooter.”

The victims’ parents are totally up in arms about the controversial video game.

Ryan Petty, father of 14-year-old Alaina who died during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, took things to social media and condemned the “despicable” game.

He wrote on Facebook:

“It’s disgusting that Valve Corp. is trying to profit from the glamorization of tragedies affecting our schools across the country.

“Keeping our kids safe is a real issue affecting our communities and is in no way a ‘game’.”

Meanwhile, the creators were quick to defend the game.

One of the creators shared:

“First of all, this game does not promote any sort of violence, especially any soft of a mass shooting.

“Originally when this game started its course of the development, I have planned on having SWAT only based game-play.

“Then I thought about adding more gameplay to it by adding additional roles: of the shooter and the civilian. While I can see people’s anger and why this might be a bad idea for the game, I still feel like this topic should be left alone.

“As I mentioned on steam discussion forums, there are games like Hatred, Postal, Carmageddon and etc., which are even worst compared to “Active Shooter” and literally focuses on mass shootings/killings of people.

“I have wrote to Valve regarding this game and waiting for the reply. After receiving such high amount of critics and hate, I will more likely remove the shooters role in this game by the release, unless if it can be kept as it is right now.”

Is there really a correlation between mass shootings and violent video games?

So far, experts remain divided about this subject with some saying that it potentially contributes to violence while others are claiming there are no direct connection whatsoever between the two.