Suspected Trump shooter's game pulled from sale on Steam after flood of meme reviews

As reported by Kotaku, Bohrdom, the game developed by suspected White House Correspondents' Dinner shooter Cole Allen Thomas, has been pulled from sale on Steam. The chemistry/physics simulation game had seen a wave of new purchases, with its accompanying spike in reviews expressing political opinions related to Thomas' alleged attempted assassination of US president Donald Trump.

Bohrdom had already garnered significant attention the very night of the incident, with Steam users flooding Bohrdom's discussion forums and reviews on Saturday and Sunday, some to crack jokes, other to stake a political opinion either way.

At the time of writing, it is not clear whether Bohrdom was removed by Valve, or a representative acting on Allen's behalf. I have reached out to Valve for comment, and will update this story if I hear back. Bohrdom's store page, forums, and reviews are still up, even if you can no longer purchase the game.

Valve being behind the removal would not be surprising: Pressure from socially conservative organizations via payment processing companies has led to an uptick in adult games getting banned from sale on the platform⁠—Valve seems more willing than at any point in its history to take a heavy hand with Steam moderation. But even before that relatively recent development, banning Bohrdom would have been in line with Valve's more traditionally laissez faire moderation style.

Valve has previously banned deliberately trolling, politically toxic games on a case-by-case basis, as with this mass-culling back in 2018. When the developer of gladiator management sim Domina began using minor update patch notes as a vehicle for anti-trans invective in 2022, Valve removed the game from sale after repeated warnings to the developer.

Bohrdom's lack of organic sales prior to the White House Correspondents' Dinner incident, coupled with the uniform political nature of the new activity, strikes me as being in breach of Valve's usual norms. But there could also be a more prosaic explanation.

Many of Bohrdom's reviewers may have abused Steam's refund window to write a review and get their two dollars back⁠—most of the reviews have less than a half hour of playtime logged⁠—further delegitimizing this spike in activity in Valve's eyes. If you're going to sweatily rush to write a lame meme review of a game connected to current events, you should have to put some cash on the line.