PayPal Bans Transactions for School Shooting Video Game 'Active Shooter'

Online payment channel PayPal has joined other companies in blocking services for the controversial video game “Active Shooter.”

The video game, as its title clearly suggests, simulates an active shooting set in a high school building. Players are given the choice to play as a SWAT team member responding to the scene, or as the gunman.

PayPal confirmed on Wednesday that it has forfeited an account being used by the developer of “Active Shooter” known by the name of Acid Software. According to reports, the developer used a PayPal account to collect payments for the game.

“PayPal has a longstanding, well-defined and consistently enforced Acceptable Use Policy that prohibits the use of our services for the promotion of violence,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to HuffPost.

As expected, PayPal’s decision did not sit well with Acid Software. Its Seattle-based representative, Ata Berdyev, told the Associated Press, “Seems like everyone in US trying to censor us, whilst not explaining what exactly we are violating.”

However, to these companies and especially to people who have been involved in tragic shooting incidents, the very concept that “Active Shooter” is based on is not acceptable. Even before PayPal’s blocking of transactions for the game, “Active Shooter” developers had met a slew of online petitions demanding that the game be removed from various platforms.

Specifically addressed to PayPal, organization Sandy Hook Promise initiated a petition that says, “[Acid Software] is using PayPal to raise money to glorify school shootings – the game developers are even adding children that players can hunt and murder in the game.”

The organization of mass shooting victims at Sandy Hook Elementary also reiterated that PayPal promised that it would not allow “promoting violence and of items considered obscene” on its payment platform.

Last month, Valve also removed the video game from Steam. In an earlier statement to the Washington Post, the company also called Berdyev a “troll” and has “a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation.”