The company's Web site said the game is not available to those outside Japan but it had been available to international players through third-party sites. Developed by the Japanese company Illusion, Rapelay was banned by Amazon and eBay, according to The Associated Press.
In February, anti-violence advocates condemned a video game in which players direct a character to stalk and rape a mother and her daughters.
These games that are not available on PCs or game consoles like PlayStation and Xbox are considered by the industry to be on the "fringe" and are not subject to ratings from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), Still, What They Like's Davison emphasizes that flash or Web-based games like "Faith Fighter" and others "don't represent the whole body of games that are out there."
The company went back to the drawing board and recently launched an updated version, Faith Fighter 2, that it says is "a positive, nonviolent education game that teaches the universal values of tolerance and respect." … If a established organization didn't understand the irony and the message of the game and is claiming it is inciting intolerance, we simply failed." In response to the rebuke, Molleindustria issued a statement of its own: "Faith Fighter was meant to be a game against intolerance that used over the top irony and a cartoonish style to express the instrumental use of religions. In the online game, cartoon representations of Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, God and the Hindu God Ganesh engage in combat as buildings burn behind them. The game would serve no other purpose than to incite intolerance," the OIC said, according to The Associated Press. "The computer game was incendiary in its content and offensive to Muslims and Christians. In April, after the game had been online for about a year, the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference, which represents most Muslim nations, said the game had no place online. The satirical religious game "Faith Fighter" was reportedly played millions of times by players around the world before it was removed from the Internet. The game would have been the company's first venture from Web games to mainstream games, he said. "Ultimately, the mere fact that our company name was in the same sentence as the name Al Qaeda – that was unacceptable," Chishti said. Still, after a slew of e-mail messages from Americans expressing disappointment and outrage at the game, the company decided to stop development. Zarrar Chishti, a spokesman for the company, told that they worked with Begg to mirror "the look and feel of the place" but that he had no connection to Al Qaeda and was not profiting from the project. It was never designed to be 'propaganda' or 'a recruiting tool for terrorism.' Neither was it designed to glamorize terrorism as has been reported."Īfter reports started to fly that an ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg, had been a consultant on the project, earlier this week, conservative pundits like the Weekly Standard's Tom Joscelyn and radio host Rush Limbaugh attacked the game and the company.
In a statement on its Web site, T-Enterprise said, "Unfortunately, much of the speculation regarding the game itself made by various publications and websites has been inaccurate and ill informed.