A video game that let players simulate a school shooting was set to come out on Steam, the PC’s biggest platform for buying and selling games. But Valve Corporation, which runs Steam, has taken it down. 
 
 Active Shooter, from developer Revived Games and publisher ACID, was set to release next week on Steam. But it drew a lot of negative attention, including from outlets like BuzzFeed and Kotaku, as well as the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. Parkland activist Emma Gonzalez tweeted, “Valve Corp shut down this shovelware immediately please.” (Shovelware is software that does nothing new and is a quick cash grab.) Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) called the game “inexcusable.” 
 
 On Tuesday, a Valve spokesperson told Deadline that the company is removing the game from its online storefront: 
 
 We have removed the developer Revived Games and publisher ACID from Steam. This developer and publisher is, in fact, a person calling himself Ata Berdiyev, who had previously been removed last fall when he was operating as “[bc]Interactive” and “Elusive Team”. Ata is a troll, with a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation. His subsequent return under new business names was a fact that came to light as we investigated the controversy around his upcoming title. We are not going to do business with people who act like this towards our customers or Valve. The broader conversation about Steam’s content policies is one that we’ll be addressing soon. 
 
 The ill-advised game, based on a video posted on Steam, would let you play either as a SWAT team member focused on stopping the school shooting or as the actual shooter. The game’s developer, it seems, saw this as a selling point — with the developer pointing out on Steam that “[o]nly in ‘Active Shooter’, you will be able to pick the role of an Elite S.W.A.T [sic] member or the actual shooter.” 
 
 The video showed a shooter running through school hallways and classrooms while killing — with firearms and grenades — police officers and civilians. Through a score counter, the game tracked “civ killed” and “cops killed.” 
 
 The developer responded to the outrage last week, saying that it “will more likely remove the shooters [sic] role in this game by the release, unless if [sic] it can be kept as it is right now.” But it also defended the game, arguing that there are worse games out there (“Hatred, Postal, Carmageddon and etc.”) and that it “does not promote any sort of violence, especially any soft [sic] of a mass shooting.” 
 
 For more on America’s gun violence problem, read Vox’s explainer. ||||| BELLEVUE, Wash. (AP) — A Seattle-area company has removed a school shooting video game from its online platform following widespread backlash. 
 
 The "Active Shooter" video game was pulled days before it was to be released on the video game marketplace Steam. 
 
 Valve Corp. as Steam's parent company said Tuesday that it was removing the computer video game because the developer was a "troll with a history of customer abuse." 
 
 The game was developed by Revived Games, published by Acid and led by a person named Ata Berdiyev. Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi says Berdiyev had previously been kicked off the platform under a different business name. 
 
 The game allows players to re-create school shootings by stalking school hallways and racking up kills. 
 
 It was condemned by the parents of students killed during a Florida school shooting in February. 
 
 The Seattle Times reports that an online petition urging Valve to pull the game before its scheduled June 6 release had more than 100,000 signatures. 
 
 Valve is a privately held company which has developed popular games such as "Dota 2" and "Half-Life." ||||| "They're trying to profit off of it, and I think it's disgusting," Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter, Alyssa, was killed after being shot 10 times at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, said on Tuesday. "We are trying to prevent this from happening again, and they are encouraging it. It is despicable. It is vile." 
 
 The computer game was going to be released via the digital marketplace Steam, and was developed by Revived Games, which marketed it as a "dynamic SWAT simulator." It offered the option to play either the shooter or a SWAT team member. 
 
 Acid, the publisher of the game, addressed the controversy in a confusing blog post last week on Steam's forums, writing: "After receiving such high amount of critics and hate, I will more likely remove the shooters [sic] role in this game by the release, unless if it can be kept as it is right now." 
 
 The post is attributed to a developer named Arthur Belkin, who lists the Russian Federation as his home country. 
 
 But on Tuesday night, Valve Corporation, the owner of Steam, announced it had removed the game after an investigation, and found that the developer and publisher was actually "a person calling himself Ata Berdiyev, who had previously been removed last fall." 
 
 "Ata is a troll, with a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation," Valve said. "His subsequent return under new business names was a fact that came to light as we investigated the controversy around his upcoming title. We are not going to do business with people who act like this towards our customers or Valve." 
 
 Many had called for the game to be pulled, including anti-gun activist Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Parkland shooting. 
 
 "Wow, this is amazing news!!!" he tweeted after learning it had been removed. 
 
 A disclaimer at the beginning of the game's demo had said it did not intend to glamorize violence. 
 
 The game's description also said players should "not take any of this seriously" and urged them to get help if they feel like hurting anyone. 
 
 But many critics had said that was not enough — including Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who called the game "inexcusable" and tweeted, "Any company that develops a game like this in wake of such a horrific tragedy should be ashamed of itself." 
 
 This isn't the first video game to create such controversy. In 2011, another game, "School Shooter," which portrayed the Columbine school shooting that took place in 1999 in Colorado, was pulled after public outcry. ||||| Valve Corporation of Bellevue is planning to launch a video game on June 6 that is a school shooting simulator. This is horrific. 
 
 The company is taking the stand that this game is legal because of free speech and everything else that tech billionaires hide behind when they are doing something the public knows is absolutely, morally corrupt but legally fine - but we cannot stand for this. 
 
 How can anyone sleep at night knowing that they are profiting from turning deadly school shootings into entertainment? 
 
 Please sign this petition asking Valve to not launch this game.
– More than 120,000 people so far have signed a petition calling for a game that simulates a mass shooting inside a school to be pulled from release. Active Shooter allows players to play as either the shooter or a SWAT responder and is due out June 6 on digital platform Steam, although after outcry erupted, its creator insisted in a blog post it is meant to be a "SWAT simulator" and said he might remove the ability to play as the shooter due to the controversy. Many have spoken out against the game, from politicians to activists to survivors of shootings in Parkland, Fla., and elsewhere, NBC News reports. Vox notes that a screenshot of the game shows that when playing as the shooter, stats are kept on the number of police officers killed as well as the number of civilians killed.