Only last week, the Steam community became aware of the game Active Shooter. Set to release in June, the game would have allowed players to control a swat team member, an active shooter in a school, or a fleeing civilian. The discovery of the game quickly prompted a wave of outcry, especially since Valve recently seemed to take a hardline on games with sexual content. Since then, Valve has come forward and removed the game as well as all other titles by the developer, from their storefront. But for some, this is symptomatic of a larger issue in Valve regarding quality control.

What many see as a problem is the fact that Valve is more interested in how a company produces content than in what they produce. They had this to say in a statement to Kotaku.

For anyone who happened to take a look at publisher ACID or developer Revived Games’ other games, this was fairly obvious. Their titles all used recycled (or possibly stolen) assets with minimal gameplay and maximum trolling. One game, called White Power: Pure Voltage, wasn’t at all a game about what it sounded like – it was instead a rip off of a starter kit, and a pretty garbage game.

Valve’s statement indicates that first and foremost, a developer must prove their worth as a member of the community, and the mass of false reviews on the games as well as their incredibly low quality, proved that this was a developer that no one would want. However, many wanted the game banned purely on the grounds of its content – a school shooting.

While an argument for this can seem obvious given the current climate in America, it is a thin line. Just days ago, the indie horror game Agony launched on Steam. While the game doesn’t feature school shootings, it does feature nudity, brutal sex, infanticide, torture, and mutilation. Once Valve begins removing games based purely on content, it enters into a slippery slope that is hard to return from. This is perhaps why they recently took back a warning to adult game producers that their content would be removed.

However, the context of games content is also important. There is a pretty large difference between games like Farcry 3 and Mirror, both of which appear on Steam. Farcry 3 features a sex scene – it is even implied that it is a female on male rape scene. However, Farcry 3 is a game about a war torn island. Mirror is a game about teasing women with feathers so they will moan. It is the same reason why GTA isn’t attacked by the community for violence on civilians but Active Shooter is. Purpose and scope matter, but it can be hard to argue these to the public.

Regardless of nuances between games, Valve is well aware that they have to make changes to their current policy. In a final word with Kotaku, a Valve spokesman said, “The broader conversation about Steam’s content policies is one that we’ll be addressing soon.” It’s likely no matter what that policy is, someone will be unhappy, but Valve has to pull that band-aid soon.