Horror Game VILE: Exhumed Launches For Free Following Steam Ban, Profits Go To Charity

Originally released as a pay-what-you-want title on Itch.io, VILE: Exhumed is an updated version of the game that has the player “searching through an old computer, uncovering dark secrets, and experiencing the horrors of parasocial obsession and misogyny,” as Cadaver describes it. “There are references to sexual assault and violence against women, as well as depictions of gore – this was never a secret. This was the point.”

The recent wave of game delistings and deindexing across Steam and Itch.io come after an Australian anti-porn organization, Collective Shout, allegedly pressured payment processors like Mastercard and Visa to stop working with platforms that contained content they deemed objectionable. Collective Shout seemingly has ties to pro-censorship Evangelical organizations in the United States and has signal boosted anti-trans activists on social media.

“There are a lot of intense visuals in VILE: Exhumed, but there is no uncensored nudity, no depictions of sex acts, and no pornography whatsoever – which is one of the justifications bad actors are using right now to censor games,” Cadaver writes. “What this actually results in is taking power and storytelling away from women, other marginalized artists, and ultimately, from everyone. This censorship of my work is a direct attack on creative expression and artistic freedom, and it will not stop with false accusations of sexual content.”

Having played the game, it’s a bracing, difficult-to-stomach indictment of Internet-born misogyny that uses its uncomfortable elements to drive home its thesis. “The one thing that hasn’t changed during all of the bullshit is my one piece of advice,” Cadaver says at the end of her statement. “Please, now more than ever, make the weird thing. Throw up your yarn and create with it.”