viewer111: It is sad that such activities and criminals are glorified here for the sake of fun, while people's lives and societies are destroyed because of them.
Ranayna: Well… my first thought was somewhat similar.
But after thinking about that for just a moment longer, i quickly realized how silly i was.
What is the difference of this to say, virtually any shooter? Or even „worse“, a wargame?
We are talking about games here, not real life.
There's always some unease related to proximity (even in war games). "Too soon", "too close", etc. That's why Carmageddon us fun (deliberately squishing pedestrians is an outrageously cartoonish notion), but a car simulator all about hitting dogs or cats, etc, would be paradoxically less well received.
It's like a moral uncanny valley. Playing evil genius, dictator, pirate or antichrist is fun, so is playing a petty annoyance à la Neighbours from Hell, but rape isn't.
(Plus the fact that proximity itself is subjective. Sometimes, world events or life events make a given game thematically less fun - to individuals or to societies.)