YouTube has
deleted several videos posted to its platform of a suffragette being beaten and
killed in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2.
The
Google-owned firm said the recordings had breached its rules on acceptable
content.
At least one
of the clips had attracted more than one million views before it acted.
Several
users had joked about the fact they were able to attack a "feminist"
in the linked comments.
The
Western-themed Red Dead Redemption 2 is set at the end of the 19th Century,
about two decades before women were given the vote in all US states.
On Wednesday
morning, the BBC asked the firm whether 10 clips breached its policies.
YouTube has
since removed eight of them.
One of the
creators involved had over 473,000 subscribers at the time and has had his
channel shut down as a consequence.
"YouTube's
Community Guidelines prohibit among other things, gratuitous violence, nudity, dangerous
and illegal activities, and hate speech," said a spokeswoman from YouTube.
"Creative
formats such as video games can be challenging to assess, but when content
crosses the line and is flagged to our attention, we take action as
necessary."
The videos
had included the computer-controlled character being beaten, shot at, fed to an
alligator and dropped down a mineshaft.
The firm has
allowed a clip titled "hog-tying feminist" to remain in which the
suffragette is caught with a lasso, pulled to the ground and has her hands
bound, but is not killed.
The other
remaining clip shows the woman being punched unconscious.
Image
caption YouTube allows clips in which the suffragette is assaulted but not
killed
Red Dead
Redemption 2 has attracted very positive reviews, and attained a score of 97
out of 100 on Metacritic, which collates critics' reviews.
Many of the
18-certificate game's non-playable characters can be attacked, but there has
been criticism of a decision to allow the suffragette to be vulnerable given
the controversy this could attract.
Suffragettes
also appear in another part of the game, but attacking them there leads to the
failure of the mission.
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