Yesterday we discovered that Amazon.com wasn’t the only website selling the rape simulation video game, Rapelay. Now Overstock.com has stopped selling the game and apologized and the game has disappeared from eBay.
A reader forwarded us the email she received from Jacob Hawkins, Senior Vice President at Overstock.com after contacting the company about the video game. He wrote:
I appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We try, but not always succeed, in catching and removing items like this from our website. This was an unintentional error and we hope you will accept our sincere apologies. We promptly removed this product from our website and added it to our prohibited items list, and in future will more carefully police for similar auction products.
The game was not being sold directly from Overstock.com, but through the auctions section of the website. All auctions of the game have been removed from the site, as well as from eBay.
Amazon.com was never selling the game directly either. It was listed on Amazon Marketplace, the section of the website open to third-party sellers. Following complaints, Rapelay was removed from Amazon.com and a company spokeswoman said today, “we determined that we did not want to be selling this particular item,” according to the writes on Shakesville that after clicking on one of the games suggested by Amazon.com when “Rapelay” yielded no results, she was asked “looking for rape products?” The link directed her to pages upon pages of books and movies of interest to rape enthusiasts, mixed in with books like The Rape Recovery Handbook.
McEwan searched for similar suggestions on other websites, but says:
Nowhere else [but on Amazon.com] was I offered up an opportunity to browse “rape products” clearly tailored to people who get off on rape. Nowhere else was I asked if I meant to search for “age,” but nonetheless offered a link to browse “rape products.” Nowhere else did I see “revenge” or “women” associated with rape.
Ed Note: If the comments here spiral out of control the same way they did on yesterday’s post, we’ll have to disable them. Please, people: Be respectful, and alert us to any trolls.
Rapelay Virtual Rape Game Banned By Amazon [The Telegraph]
Related: Looking For Rape Products? Try Amazon [Shakesville]