Steam news: School shooter's racist rants, Nazi ideals discovered on market platform account

Hitler and his Nazi congregation, one of the factions which William Atchison is defending Wikipedia/German Federal Archive

A portfolio's worth of racist rants and hate speeches have been discovered in the Steam profile of recent juvenile school shooter William Edward Atchison.

Apparently, Atchison was a long-time user of Steam and even reviewed a total of 77 video games on the online market platform. Atchison's activity and his history of racism were unearthed after the incident of his attack took place in Aztec High School in Aztec, New Mexico on Dec. 7 where he shot and killed two people before killing himself as well.

The account, which had Atchison's profile, revealed reviews which contained anecdotes defending Hitler and Nazi Germany and their systemic massacre of the Jews. Atchison did this particularly in his user review for 2015's "Wolfenstein" game where Jew protagonist William "B.J." Blazkowicz repeatedly kills hordes of fictionally futuristic Nazis.

"It was revolutionary for [its] time. The problem I have with it is the fact that you spend the entire game killing germans - killing white people," stated Atchison in the review. The said review for "Wolfenstein" has already been banned by Steam, and cannot be modified, but it can still be viewed. Atchison's Steam profile, which was also confirmed to be authentic by website Motherboard, also has a collection of uploaded artwork which contained his extremist views.

Most of what can be found in Atchison's profile in Steam consist of swastikas, anti-Semitic propaganda, and other assorted far-right imagery. Apart from his game reviews and Steam activity, Atchison has also actively participated in online alt-right and extremist groups and websites, most of which were pro-Trump and involve violent White-supremacy ideals.

As of now though, it seems Valve, the owner of Steam, has removed Atchison's profile following the shooting incident and the widespread reports of what his account contained. Still, Atchison has had a large racist footprint in the online community, and Valve apparently left racist and hate groups alone in Steam despite their hurtful practices and violent propaganda. Some groups of Steam were even online collectives of racists who discuss killing Jews, black people, transgender people, and other minorities.

At the time of writing, some of the said groups, particularly Nazi 2.0, have been disabled or deactivated, which means Valve may be cleaning up Steam of its hateful content. That said, some wonder why the game company had not addressed these groups before Atchison's profile was discovered.

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