A "racist" mobile game that not only allowed, but encouraged players to bludgeon Australian Aboriginals has been removed from Apple's iTunes store and Google Play following an online petition signed by more than 89,000 people.
The app, Survival Island 3 – Australia Story 3D, tasks players with surviving the Australian outback by any means necessary — including the brutal killing of Australian Aboriginals.
The introduction reads: “Your goal is to survive. Beware of angry animals, especially if you don’t have any weapon. At nights, there is really dangerous, (sic) try to hide somewhere…. Hunt animals or grow plants – you have to eat something. You also have to fight with Aboriginals (sic) – you invaded their home!”
The petition, which called for the games removal from app stores, claimed, 'Selling games that promote racism and negative stereotypes of Indigenous Australians is not acceptable!"
The petition continued:
"Indigenous Australians face daily racism and discrimination. Indigenous Australians are over policed and continue to die at the hands of the state. This app further perpetuates the denial of Indigenous Australians humanity. It associates us with flora and fauna of the Australian landscape.
By shooting ‘dangerous Aboriginals’, this app makes us inhuman, it re-enforces racial violence, lack of punishment for white people taking black lives, it makes fun and sport of massacres and Frontier violence. This App is another colonialist frontier and continues to exploit the deaths of many Aboriginal people without regard to the trauma that it instigates."
By mid-say Saturday, the app, which was rated 12+ by Apple, had been pulled from the iTunes store and Google Play, though neither Apple nor Google would comment on the game.
