> Then is torture, rape and murder wrong because the victim is sentient, or because the perpetrator is?

Nothing is wrong unless it's done by a moral actor (which is a much higher standard than sentience. Pretty much everything with a central nervous system is sentient, but lobsters, for instance, are not moral actors.

Similarly, the usual understanding of the moral status (the gravity of not the binary permissible/wrong status) of the three acts you describe is somewhat connected to the target as well as the actor being a moral actor (that's least the case with torture, and most the case with murder) rather than merely sentient.

There are arguments to be made for both. Some crimes, even if virtual, can stain or corrupt the perpetrator in ways inimical to society. There are plenty of examples of people who fantasised or role played abhorrent behaviour and went on to perpetrate it in real life, so there is a real danger.

For example we tolerate computer games with virtual killing, but don’t tolerate virtual rape games. Even with virtual killing there are limits. Should we tolerate nazi death camp torturer simulation games?

I'm trying to understand the connection between the original question and video games.

This seems like an orthogonal set of considerations.

I think it has to do with the part where the perpetrator is a concious being. Clearly the enemies in the games aren’t concious, but does it still stain the human playing the game?

It was an angle I didn’t consider at all, so it was actually quite interesting.

> Should we tolerate nazi death camp torturer simulation games?

This immediately brought the “Farming Simulator” imagery to mind. I can totally see how they’d make a nazi death camp simulator seem soul crushingly boring.

Because the victim is, of course.

We do, however, choose to not give guilty verdicts to people we feel are not adequately capable of judging this for themselves.