HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT – The developer of a school-shooting video game is vowing to continue selling it online as parents of slain children and other mass shooting victims work to get the game wiped off the internet. The "Active Shooter" game was created by Anton Makarevskiy, a 21-year-old developer from Moscow, and is being marketed by his entity Acid Software. Acid said in a Twitter posting Tuesday that it will not be censored and cited free expression rights. The game is branded as a "SWAT simulator" that lets players choose between being an active shooter terrorizing a school or the SWAT team responding to the shooting. Players can choose a gun, grenade or knife, and civilian and police death totals are shown on the screen.

A video game designed to simulate school shooting scenarios has been removed from the digital games store Steam. Active Shooter was due to be launched on the popular PC gaming site on 6 June, provoking an outcry from politicians and the parents of children killed during the Parkland shooting in Florida. A petition calling for the game to be removed from the store was signed by more than 180,000 people. Valve Corporation, which runs the Steam site used by more than 100 million people, said in a statement: "We have removed the developer Revived Games and publisher ACID from Steam. This developer and publisher is, in fact, a person calling himself Ata Berdiyev, who had previously been removed last fall when he was operating as '[bc]Interactive' and'Elusive Team.'"