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Torres raises concerns about Oct. 7 roleplay game on Steam video game store

“Steam is selling a video game that represents nothing less than an open invitation of violence against Israelis and Jews,” Torres said in a letter to Valve President Gabe Newell

Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 30: Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York, speaks at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on oversight of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve coronavirus pandemic response on Capitol Hillon September 30, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Treasury secretary this week warned in a letter to congressional leaders that her department will effectively run out of cash around Oct. 18 unless Congress suspends or increases the debt limit.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) raised concerns on Thursday to the owners of the digital video game store Steam about a video game sold on the platform that allows players to role-play as Palestinian terrorists participating in the Oct. 7 attack.

Steam is a major online marketplace for video games, where developers can sell their games to players. The game, called “Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” sells for $14.99.

“Steam is selling a video game that represents nothing less than an open invitation of violence against Israelis and Jews,” Torres said in a letter to Valve President Gabe Newell. “The complicity of a company like yours in normalizing the most monstrous forms of antisemitic violence and terror — like beheadings, suicide bombings, and the war crimes of October 7th — is as profound an abdication of social responsibility as anything I have seen from any company anywhere in the world.”

Torres urged Valve to stop selling the game or any others that “[promote] the normalization of violence against Jews.”

“Antisemitism is not a business model from which to profit,” he said. “It is a demon that must be exorcised from the soul of humanity.”

British authorities ordered Steam to remove the game from its store in the U.K. in November, describing it as terrorist propaganda, and it is also blocked in Austria and Germany, according to The Telegraph.

Trailers for and images from the game show the player character, a terrorist wearing a Hamas-style green headband shooting Israeli soldiers, prompting sprays of blood and gore, and flying into an Israeli army base on paragliders.

Nidal Nijm, the game’s creator, said that the game “allows you to relive the iconic day on which the brave Palestinian resistance humiliated Israeli military forces,” The Telegraph reported.

Nijm told Newsweek, “I do not see Palestinian Resistance as Terrorism, rather, I see Israeli Soldiers as the biggest terrorists of this whole world.”

Torres isn’t the first lawmaker to raise alarms about antisemitic content on Steam. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) urged the company to take action following an Anti-Defamation League report that showed more than 1 million users and 100,000 groups on Steam’s social media platform feature had glorified antisemitic, Nazi, white supremacist and other hateful ideologies.

“My concern is elevated by the fact that Steam is the largest single online gaming digital distribution and social networking platform in the world with over 100 million unique user accounts and a userbase similar in scale to that of the ‘traditional’ social media and social network platforms,” Warner said. “Until now, Steam has largely not received its due attention as a de facto major social network where its users engage in many of the same activities expected of a social media platform.”

Warner noted that Steam earns billions in revenue annually.

The Fursan al-Aqsa game was first released in April 2022 and has been the subject of controversy since before its release, but faced renewed attention since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. It was updated following the attacks with gameplay elements mirroring the attacks.

Its website says the game, “[breaks] the cliché of portraying Muslim and Arabs as Terrorists, Bandits, Villains and the Americans/Israelis as the ‘Good Guys’ and ‘Heroes’ of History.”

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