PayPal Blocking School Shooting Sim Payments on Steam

Active Shooter - The Simulation. Sounds like the worst video game pitch of all time, right? Unfortunately, it was a real thing though the outrage was immediate and promptly caused Valve to respond by pulling it from their shelves. That being said, the controversial title is still available for sale through another venue, though the developer isn't having the easiest go of it. Now Acid Software has to pony up some cash for the product itself courtesy of PayPal.

The dev team recently took to their blog to alert fans that sales of their title are currently "temporarily disabled" while they try to work with PayPal. PayPal has since issued a statement regarding their decision in response to the impassioned outcry of gamers that couldn't fathom why this game needed to be made.

"PayPal has a longstanding, well-defined and consistently enforced Acceptable Use Policy, and regardless of the individual or organisation in question, we work to ensure that our services are not used to accept payments for activities that promote violence," PayPal said in a statement.

Just like Acid did when the initial backlash occurred, the response issued to The Associated Press was unapologetic and made it difficult for gamers to sympathize. Once again, the disconnection become glaringly evident between dev and the gaming community.

"Seems like everyone in US trying to censor us, whilst not explaining what exactly we are violating," he told the AP when the future of the game was pulled into question.

A sensitive subject no matter what, but with an official game description listed as "Depending on the role, your objective might be to protect and extract or hunt and destroy," and recent events that seems to be almost a weekly occurrance, the outrage is understandable.

As described by the developers, Active Shooter is "a dynamic SWAT simulator in which dynamic roles are offered to players." Players can see themselves with an in-depth arsenal at their disposal as they roam school halls for the game's objective. With public shootings on the rise and more and more schools themselves falling victim to this crime, it's in extreme poor taste for a game of this nature to be seen as "entertainment."