VILE: Exhumed is a game about searching through an old computer, uncovering dark secrets, and experiencing the horrors of parasocial obsession and misogyny. There are references to sexual assault and violence against women, as well as depictions of gore – this was never a secret. This was the point.
It was intended to be released for sale on July 22, 2025 on Steam – the largest video game storefront in the world.
Instead, it was removed from Steam and banned for sale.
VILE: Exhumed was not banned for its use of gore, or its intense themes – themes that are sensitive but many players related to – it was wrongfully banned for “sexual content with depictions of real people.”
The game covers topics of assault, abuse, and entitlement, and uses a combination of FMV and practical effects to create images as horrifying as the themes. This was never a secret. There are a lot of intense visuals in VILE: Exhumed, but there is no uncensored nudity, no depictions of sex acts, and no pornography whatsoever – which is one of the justifications bad actors are using right now to censor games.
What this actually results in is taking power and storytelling away from women, other marginalized artists, and ultimately, from everyone.
This censorship of my work is a direct attack on creative expression and artistic freedom, and it will not stop with false accusations of sexual content.
They will come for anything that speaks more loudly than they do.
By giving the game away, for free, to whoever wants to play it, I am doing the same thing I set out to do when I started working on VILE: Exhumed, a game about sexual assault, male entitlement, and misogyny. Taking back my agency.
No one is allowed to dictate what kind of horror is acceptable, or what stories are allowed to be told.
VILE: Exhumed is now available to download for free as shareware under a CC BY-NC-ND license through a few different methods on this page. This felt like the best option to make the game available to as many people as possible. Trying to release on a different storefront would only open us up to the same problem we ran into with Steam.
Below, you will also find links to financially support the game. Since VILE: Exhumed was intended to be my first commercially released game, we wanted to provide a way for people to financially support it as well. DreadXP will be donating all of their portion of the profits, and I will be donating a portion of mine, totaling in 50% of the profits from the game being donated to Red Door Family Shelter, a Toronto based charity that focuses on helping families, refugees, and women who are escaping violence.
Every person at DreadXP has worked so hard to support me, and support VILE: Exhumed, and I want to take this opportunity to thank them. They encouraged my artistic freedom from the very start and through all the stress and heartbreak of my game being banned, they stood beside me – promising me they would do everything they could to get VILE: Exhumed out and into the world – somehow. The decision to distribute the game for free, to make sure as many people could play it as possible, was a collaborative effort that not only had DreadXP’s support, but their enthusiastic encouragement.
I also want to say thank you to anyone who has supported me, whether you played the original version of VILE on itch.io, or maybe even the games I worked on previously to this, followed me on social media and got curious about the game, or if you just heard about me moments before arriving at this website.
You are why I create things.
The one thing that hasn’t changed during all of the bullshit is my one piece of advice.
Please, now more than ever, make the weird thing. Throw up your yarn and create with it.
Thank you.
– Cara Cadaver
