Steam features Ultimate General: Gettysburg on home page, completely owns Apple

Amidst a major nationwide debate surrounding the usage of the Confederate flag in the United States —  a debate that has seen major American companies like Amazon and Apple buckle under the pressure of a loud minority — Valve is rising as a national hero.

On a day when Apple nonsensically removed all apps and games bearing the Confederate flag, Valve, with one swift move, has boldly proclaimed they will not cave into public pressure.

Not only are Civil War games actively being sold on Valve's PC digital distribution platform Steam, but they've gone ahead and featured Ultimate General: Gettysburg, a real-time strategy game set in the American Civil War and one of the victims of Apple's knee-jerk reaction today.

Over on the Steam home page you can the PC version of Ultimate General: Gettysburg front-and-center.

For those unfamiliar with the controversy, the Confederate flag has been at the center of attention since last week's shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, which has been said to be racially motivated. As a result, the usage of the Confederate flag in contemporary America has been called into question. Earlier today, Apple began removing all games and apps featuring the Confederate flag regardless of context. The reasoning Apple is giving developers is "…because it includes images of the confederate flag used in offensive and mean-spirited ways."

I'm just going to point out that Ultimate General: Gettysburg is a video game set in the American Civil War, and I'll let you come to what should be a logical conclusion as to how stupid Apple's decision has been.

Game Labs, developers of Ultimate General: Gettysburg, appear to be taking the sudden news fairly well, posting a measured response on the game's official website.

"As you may have been already informed (Read Facebook link), Apple has removed our game from AppStore because of usage of the Confederate Flag. Ultimate General: Gettysburg could be accepted back if the flag is removed from the game's content.

We accept Apple's decision and understand that this is a sensitive issue for the American Nation. We wanted our game to be the most accurate, historical, playable reference of the Battle of Gettysburg. All historical commanders, unit composition and weaponry, key geographical locations to the smallest streams or farms are recreated in our game's battlefield.

We receive a lot of letters of gratitude from American teachers who use our game in history curriculum to let kids experience one of the most important battles in American history from the Commander's perspective. 

Spielberg’s "Schindler's List" did not try to amend his movie to look more comfortable. The historical "Gettysburg" movie (1993) is still on iTunes. We believe that all historical art forms: books, movies, or games such as ours, help to learn and understand history, depicting events as they were. True stories are more important to us than money.

Therefore we are not going to amend the game's content and Ultimate General: Gettysburg will no longer be available on AppStore. We really hope that Apple’s decision will achieve the desired results.

We can’t change history, but we can change the future."

[Thanks John Galt via Vito Gesualdi]