Game:

Hatred (2015)

Duration: 2:44

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5

Hatred, which is an upcoming indie game that is effectively a mass-shooting simulator was removed from Steam’s Greenlight program. Hatred seemingly has you, the player, go on a rampage to kill as many innocent people as possible, and Valve deleted it’s listing on Greenlight after the game had already received thousands of votes, saying:

“Based on what we've seen on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we'll be taking it down.”

So, for those who aren’t aware, Greenlight is basically a way for Steam users to choose which games they’d like to see on Steam. Developers can submit their game to Greenlight with a handful of information and even beta versions, and then users can pledge support to those games, with Steam then publishing highly-pledged games. So, all Hatred really had to do to get on Steam was pay $100, and bam.

Because the trailer for Hatred, which was posted in October this year, features stabbings, shotgun executions and mall shootings, I’m not entirely surprised that Valve pulled the game originally -- though, they did go back on this decision, but we’ll get to that. Epic Games, did also distance itself from Hatred when their logo was featured on the trailer. They said:

“Epic Games isn't involved in this project. Unreal Engine 4 is available to the general public for use 'for any lawful purpose,' and we explicitly don't exert any sort of creative control or censorship over projects. However, the video is using the trademarked Unreal Engine 4 logo without permission from Epic, and we've asked for the removal of our logo from all marketing associated with this product.”

Destructive Creations, the developers of Hatred, responded to Steam’s decision by saying:

“Even though games like Manhunt or Postal are still available on Steam we of course fully respect Valve’s decision, as they have right to do so. In the same time we want to assure you that this won’t in any way impact the game development, game’s vision or gameplay features we’re aiming for. The game is still to be released in Q2 2015 as planned.
Moreover we don’t treat this as a failure because yet again this showed us a huge community support we’re totally overwhelmed with. After only a couple of hours Greenlight campaign being live, Hatred gathered 13,148 up votes and ended up on a #7 on top 100 list.

The whole situation only pushes us forward to go against any adversity and not to give up.”

Now, after all of that, Hatred has been reinstated after just over a day, by Valve’s Gabe Newell himself. He sent an email to the Poland-based developer, Destructive Creations, saying:

“Yesterday I heard that we were taking Hatred down from Greenlight. Since I wasn't up to speed, I asked around internally to find out why we had done that. It turns out that it wasn't a good decision, and we'll be putting Hatred back up. My apologies to you and your team.”

Newell hasn’t given any exact explanation for reinstating the game, but, while I’m not comfortable with the content of Hatred, I would’ve found it unreasonable for Steam to censor the service in that way. I absolutely support Hatred being allowed on Steam, despite being absolutely against the content. That said, the game sure did just get even more publicity, and I am contributing to that right now, which feels kinda sucky.

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