The Campaign to Remove a R*pe Game from Steam

Haley McNamara and Dani Pinter sit down with Melinda Tankard Reist, Co-Founder and Movement Director of Collective Shout, for a discussion around the recent successful campaign to remove a sexually violent game called “No Mercy” from Steam. Melinda describes how the game allows players to sexually assault your family members and rewards you for doing so. In less than a week, this campaign garnered over 70,000 signatures and over 3,000 emails sent to the CEO of Valve to remove this game. Despite the backlash and threats, Melinda and the team at Collective Shout continue their work to protect women and children from objectification and sexualization.

Melinda is an author, speaker, media commentator and campaigner. She is best known for her work addressing sexualization, objectification, harms of pornography, sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence against women. Melinda is author/editor of seven books (no. 8 on boundary-setting for girls forthcoming 2025). She co-founded Collective Shout for a world free of sexploitation 15 years ago, and is Movement Director. Melinda is an Ambassador for World Vision Australia, Compassion Australia, Hagar NZ and the youth mentoring body the Raise Foundation. She is also Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Culture and Ethics, Notre Dame University, Sydney and named in the Who’s Who of Australian Women and the World Who’s Who of Women. In 2024 she was the recipient of the ‘Global Impact Award’ presented at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation [CESE] Global Summit in Washington DC.