I dunno why people get so upset over this. It's just a game...
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Seems like a pretty simple case of not wanting to deal with the inevitable shitstorm that would follow from selling the game on their store. Choose not to sell it and a week later it's forgotten.
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Can't see it passing. Skip the Greenlight process and place it straight on the store and a ton of "Hatred now available on Steam" articles will spring up. Commence shitstorm.
Someone somewhere commits a violent act IRL and the game pops up in a news story? Commence shitstorm.
It's easier for Valve and better PR to wash their hands of the whole thing.
Edit: Misunderstood your post slightly. Yes, I suppose in years to come they could sneak the game onto the store without any fuss but I can't see the small number of sales making up for the potential bad rep from the press. Some things just aren't worth the hassle.
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This.
There's a distinct difference between the ability to mindlessly rampage and having it be the sole focus of your game. It isn't even mindless, it's premeditated acts of cruelty (complete with viciously animated executions) enacted against innocents.
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Except that GTA glorifies gang violence and offers a sense of immunity from repercussion by having your character shrug off deaths by just walking out of a hospital with a shrug and less money in their pocket.
What is honestly worse? Making a gory action game where the character is openly shown to be a psychotic asshole that nobody should want to be like, and present the loss of life as a tragic and disturbing thing... or glorifying killing to the point that you can still randomly murder innocents but they are just seen as gory bowling pins for entertainment with no emotional impact or consideration? Seriously, let that sink in for a moment.
Gang culture and crime are also big issues, and providing an appealing take on it (even if also layered with grit and warnings) provides a far more poisonous offering. Consider things like Manhunt and Postal 2, which people shrank away from but then once the media blowback died down and the Streisand Effect was in full motion, every company wanted to cash in.
There is a difference in being tasteless and needing a boycott. As I mentioned in other comments, Bioshock was once boycotted for allowing 'harm to children'. Postal 2 was banned for letting you attack civilians or using pee as a mechanic. "Bully" came under flack for portraying violence with minors on a mostly schoolyard (albeit a draconian schoolyard) level.
For christs sake, why can't people just let the grown adults choose what entertainment media they consume for themselves and stop this weird memetic hivemind "ur sickos" crap? :P
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"For christs sake, why can't people just let the privately-owned distributors choose what entertainment media they release for the masses and stop this weird memetic hivemind "freedom" crap? :P"
See what I did there?
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Both games are about being monster. Only one of them doesn't pretend you are going to play a monster.
And I like playing GTA. Because I know I'll play as someone who has no problem killing people for money, no matter if they are good, bad, ugly, as long as you pay.
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"What we've seen" doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Greenlight popularity. It's more likely regarding scruples over profit generating ability.
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Well it seems to imply that they were going by the voting, they have not given any other explicit reason.
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one thing is killing civilians just for the sake of it, other is killing civilians because it's the game objective.
that's the main difference. well that and money.
GTA sells, a lot. a hot fucking lot. you can tolerate the protesters and complaining when you are making a shit load of money, hatred would have never sold as well as a GTA
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"My name is not important. What is important is what I'm going to do"
I guess they got what they wanted when they decided to work on that game.... Hatred... people won't even allowed them to sell it on their sites... good luck getting that game on shelves at target or anywhere... they will probably ban the game out of counties
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They're sick to create a violent videogame that is unashamed to admit that the character is a crazy asshole?
As opposed to something like actually genuinely glorified gang violence? Turning gunfights into an utterly desensitised topic by mowing down hundreds of generic "baddies"? Come the fuck on. It might not exactly be in great taste, but creating a game like this doesn't mean they're sick by any means. Calling something you feel is icky as "sick" is just a gigantic cop-out.
People said the same thing about Bioshock because "you can hurt children, the people who made this must be DERANGED". The same for Postal 2 because "You can hurt unarmed civilians, MURDER SIMULATOR". The fact this game is self-aware of the depravity and doesn't shy away from showing it as something inhumane instead of something awesome is a GOOD thing.
Also, that "no artistic merit whatsoever" line is another bullshit copout. Who knighted you the arbiter of what does or does not have any artistic merit? God forbid that somebody express something uncomfortable to challenge a viewer, it's not like art is classically a medium used to challenge the viewer to emote or interpret or anything. :V
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There are plenty of action games where you get mini in-game cutscenes for "grapple-kills", where you take down an opponent with a variety of often visceral melee blows (or close-quarters shots).
The ONLY difference is that in the trailer, the targets are unarmed civilians. The content is the same, but the stylisation and focus is different, and instead of generic "it's okay to murderise this guy, he has a military uniform" guys, it's everyone, including civilian women, which is a big taboo no-no. Well, I say everyone, but I wonder if they'll go far enough to include children, they're generally the first to get plot armour unless it's for a "bad guy kicked a puppy" moment.
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How about one of the most criticially accclaimed games in the last few years, The Last of Us?
Is that not exactly the same thing? Hell, if you sneak up on people they will beg you not to kill them at gunpoint.
Oh, but I guess these are all just emotionless worthless "bad guys" who deserve it so it's OK, right?
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$1 each execution, pretty silly considering there are 9 different sets.
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One big difference though; The Last Of Us has no female targets for these executions. In fact they took them out.
Make of that what you will.
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Watched the trailer, saw nothing to be upset about. The only difference is the game went out of its way to portray itself to be what everyone comprehended it as. People are so sensitive now days, uncensored Manhunt was worse :p It made it just fine uncensored today.
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Always fun to see Valve act this quick on certain matters. If only the "public outcry" was less focused on violent games and more on crappy customer support.
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Funnily enough, there was a lot of outcry calling "Mount Your Friends" a sick game, too.
Let's face it, Valve are just trying to duck the impending shitstorm so they can keep their sales up. They'll be back to cash in once the Streisand Effect is in full swing, just like everyone else did with Manhunt and Postal 2.
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Lost a lot of respect for Valve today with them taking this game down, at the same time I found a new love for a dev team & passion for an epic game. Your loss valve.
Come join the forums & show support for the devs:
http://forums.hatredgame.com/index.php
GOG wishlist page:
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/hatred
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Woah you guys... cool it down a bit. The only reason it was removed was because it didn't have an ESRB rating, which happens to be the same reason why Manhunt isn't on Steam.
Just for the kicks, Postal does, so it's on it. It has nothing to do with censorship.
Besides I'm not sure it's a bad thing that the game got pulled out. Apart from 15 years old Linkin Park fans, I fail to see who would be interested in that.
Edit: WADDA WADDA WADDA it seems I was talking out of my butt, Manhunt is on Steam. So uh... yeah. Valve is just against the game.
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An ESRB rating is absolutely not needed to get onto Steam. Indie games don't even bother with the ESRB unless they port their game to a console.
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You really think those hundereds of super low budget indie games that get Greenlit all have ESRB ratings? lol
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take a look at all these mad people XD
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/626329187107753493/
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"Murdering for fun is wrong, but it's A-OK to kill innocents for money, right?"
oh boy...
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lol 2 people end up getting banned, well I only reported one of them dunno why another user was also banned
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so a dude quoted another dude and wrote "+1", and got banned, but not the one he has quoted. which makes me think that the original statement was okay, but giving +1 to it was not okay. steam community mods are weird. .-.
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Yes and no. Personally, I want to play Hatred. I don't think it should've been pulled and I think it should be treated as you either want to play it or you don't, like listening to death metal or watching gory horror films. I think there is a place for a game like Hatred, especially if there is more to it than has already been presented. IMO pulling it only gives it more press and notoriety. It's "that" game.
That said, the comparison to GTA is pretty weak IMO. GTA is a game where you can kill innocents if you want to. It's not a requirement/mechanic that's necessary to play through and clearly GTA has a lot more going on than just slaughter. Obviously 99% of us that play a GTA game will play it for a bit of mayhem here and there, but even killing a boatload of NPCs in GTA doesn't give the same vibe that Hatred does, at least from its trailers.
I can totally understand's Valve's perspective on another hand. Hatred is just so blatant with its violence.
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gta even encourages pc gamers not to kill people. why do you think they started to make those poor ports? it's very hard to kill people and escape from the cops with low fps, you know. expect gta v to be even worse than iv because of all this comparison with hatred and pulling off from au stores' shelves. :/
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Except you don't get to speak for everyone here or pull the percentages out of thin air.
Don't get me wrong, you have every right on your opinion and i'm not going to argue against it or support it cause it doesn't affect me in any way, but what you don't get to do is to act as some sort of moral compass for everyone else and make decisions for people who are grown enough to do so themselves - and that's what all these SJW umbrage takers are trying to push.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. Simple as that. If someone is dumb enough to not make a distinction between real life and videogames, that's their problem not mine
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Its hardly an opinion when comparing the two games. You can play an entire GTA game without killing one "innocent" if you choose to. Sure you may run over someone by accident, but you can actively avoid killing people if you want. Hatred is not built like that. The point seems to be killing innocents and we don't know what the game entails totally, but the perception of the materials given so far lead one to believe that its about killing innocent people. The supposed "percentages out of thin air" was likely a pretty good assumption that if you play a GTA game there will be a moment where you kill people to see how many cops you can get after you etc. Hell, its been a staple of GTA since the first one and I don't know of ANY player that has not tried that. It was hardly meant to be scientific or anything lol.
I'm not acting as a moral compass whatsoever and nowhere in my post did I try to convey that other than my own opinion. I want to check out Hatred when its released. I did the same thing with Super Columbine Massacre and other games that are supposedly "controversial" because I want to experience what the fuss is all about.
Here's the part I don't think you get. Steam is not a democracy. Valve don't have to carry any game that they don't want to. If I own a restaurant and don't want to serve vegan food, I don't have to no matter if one of my customers wants it on the menu. I would of course much rather see this game on Steam than not, but Valve don't have to carry it if they don't want it on their service. That's their choice as a company. Hatred will still be available directly from the developer.
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Sorry for the late reply, got caught up in stuff n things.
As for your points, i have no issues with killing innocent people in videogames. I did that in Saints Row 3/4 when specifically asked me to do so, in Spec Ops: The Line (and i'm not refering to that napalm part), in Blood Omen, MW2 and many many more
I understand that Steam likes to present itself as a democracy just as much as you. But it's hard to convince someone that they're following that principle when they are often vague and reserved about certain things, most notably in public relations. We are talking about a company that managed to greenlit a couple of games with stolen assets (so much about quality control) and at one point - managed to greenlit a same game twice and now they try to convince us that there are some regulations on that field.
As for Hatred's blatant display of violence, i will refrain from commenting till i get the chance to play the game myself. So far i only have one gameplay video and that's not much to take from.
But my main gripe is directed at people who are so desperate for attention that they go around the web and actively look for stuff to be offended at, so i can understand why Hatred might be a good target for them.
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I'm with you down the line about killing innocents. I have no issues with it either.
My replies were more seeing what's going on here and that I do not agree with the comparison of Hatred to GTA. The point to GTA isn't indiscriminate killing (and yes, even if it was Id still play it). As for Hatred has shown us so far, thats all its given us as a point. I think theres a very discernible difference between the two games.
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It's Steam's store; they get to decide what they carry. And the Greenlight terms of service make it very clear that a game like Hatred wouldn't be allowed, since the Greenlight terms of service state:
Additionally, you agree not to post any item to Greenlight that contains the following:
...
Emphasis mine. The game was almost certainly removed because they judged it to contain explicit racism, not because of the violence. And since it's their site, they have the right to decide what they consider racist or not. If you don't like that, go buy games elsewhere.
Personally I don't see why people are cranking up the froathing-internet-outrage-machine this game being removed, since it basically looks like the videogame equivalent of clickbait, but whatever floats your boat -- you just can't buy it on Steam, same reason you can't buy eg. hardcore pornographic games on Steam. Valve gets to decide what sort of site they want to run and what they want to use it to sell.
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Is the game really racist though? From the trailer it looks like you kill everyone equally. He kills men, women, whites, blacks, etc. Racism would be if this was a KKK game where you only targeted one race but this clearly is not the case.
Are you saying that the game should remove all blacks and only have white people to kill since your character is white to avoid potential racism? If anything, that sounds more racist as it's excluding people based on their race.
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Im not surprised by this at all, I agree there has to be some standard, and everyone has a standard - even those who cry foul every time there is perceived censorship. It just about being consistent with everything else that is available, which this decision seems not to be. Of all the greenlight games, the one i found the most disturbing was this and that got greenlit, so whatevs.
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Whether the game is good or not is irrelevant here. The actual question is how far can censorship go and is it okay in this case.
By a first look it seems like a logical decision to pull a game that has the only intention to build up your score by randomly killing innocent people. Sure there are other games out there with a similar concept but in those case you always do it in some sort of self-defense or the "enemy" is indeed evil. You either fight a horde of zombies trying to kill you, other soldiers, etc.
I see "Manhunt" popping up quite often but I don't think that really fits. Your opponents would indeed kill you and were criminals as well. "Postal" fits in a bit more but still not really something that would justify Hatred to be on Steam as well. The violence in that game is not based around killing innocents, it's simply an option (just like in GTA actually) as part of an rather open world. Plus it does it with a certain amount of satire. "Hatred" is just a really plain game with the only goal being to kill as many innocent people as possible.
So what does all that tell us? Basically that it's indeed not the same as the games it gets compared to and therefore shouldn't be put on Steam just because those other games are. Is it still wrong to censor like that? Personally I think yes. I don't like the idea of that game but it's still just a game. If people feel like buying and playing it sure go ahead, I don't think censorship should interfere that much. Make it 18+ and move on.
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And yet the game makes no attempt to show the character or his actions or sympathetic. It shows him as a disturbing zealot, and it shows his actions as horrible. This is a lot more than what you can say for other games, where it validates or even glorifies your actions with thin reasoning like "they were armed, they might have killed you if you didn't shoot first" or "it's okay they're the bad guys". Many games just show innocent lives as speedbumps. You get a tiny penalty sometimes, even when you do, you can often get around it with a token effort. It's okay guys, those non-badguys are just in the way of your fun, frag em!
Depicting hundreds of fatalities in a single sitting might seem okay so long as your targets are armed, but using the same standards that are applied to Hatred, those are still lives all the same. The difference between the games is that typically the mass-killing is massively framed as "totally okay you guys" and glazes over the horrible impact of killing. Somebody pointed out The Last of Us, and how once you disarm an armed attacker, they often beg for their lives and you can happily execute them on a whim, and even has DLC that adds extra executions. The problem with Manhunt wasn't that you executed people, but that you got extra points for choosing deliberately more gruesome and painful options on a whim.
While Hatred is obviously far from tasteful, being 'icky' or 'disturbing' should not be reason enough to ban a game. At least, when it is, people should be able to openly face the double standards it raises. I could understand it more if the game had a narrator that cheered you on and popped up "EXCELLENT!" or "HARDCORE!" to congratulate you for what you were doing, but it doesn't. People have tried to say that it hits too close to home, but then what about the games that outright glorify gang violence and portray certain participants as likable guys? People have tried to say that it has no artistic or entertainment merit, but art is at it's best when provoking emotions and inspiring discussion, and entertainment value is utterly down to the individual (and much is yet to be revealed about the game).
While innocent, unarmed civilians play a noticeable part in the game, I would hope that armed civilians and police play a substantial part too. This game looks to be pretty much just a modern remake of the original Postal by theme, and if they can hold up to the same deliberately disturbing tone and ensure they don't present the character as a hero or good guy, I don't see a problem.
This really comes down to yet another case of "I am offended by this, therefore nobody else should consume this". Stores are free to choose not to stock certain titles if they feel there are moral qualms with them, but it's pretty obvious that Steam just doesn't want any backlash. Give it time, it'll be stocked, but only once the initial barking has died down and it's "safe" again.
Mortal Kombat. Postal. Manhunt. Thrillkill. Silent Hill. Bioshock. Postal 2. It's a perpetually repeating cycle. Adults can police their own wants and tastes. If they really want to stop the young from getting their hands on it, just petition for an "at risk" age certification stamp to ensure places triple-check before handing it over to anyone with money :P
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I don't see why you made your own post as a reply to me...?
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Yep, if you see something different (whether the "different" is good or not) remove it.
Better approve 99k of expensive smartphone porting
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"- Guys ! Nobody's mentioning our game anymore ! We need another publicity stunt !
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My thoughts as well. If they spent a few months with developing and make some actualy gameplay footage, or trailer, or behind the screen or ANYTHING besides the " I'm mad, gonna shoot ppl" teaser, they could stand up against arguements to ban it. Currently it's just a hint of a violent game that has...violence and guns and murdering civilians in it. Nothing more. At this bland state I just don't know what to think. It's basically nothing, just a promise. Hype. Nothing more.
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Yup, pretty much this. Between the first thread about the trailer and this thread I had forgotten its existence completely, and I'm pretty sure it'll happen to most people once they find it it's just a shallow game hiding behind controversy, which would be otherwise one of the billion zombie shooters.
Furthermore, I actually think they were planning on getting banned from Greenlight as they've got now a free army of "indoctrinated" angry teens, spreading their name all over the internet.
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So putting a game on a Greenlight is now a publicity stunt? Ok..
You're suggesting that they knew they'd get banned. Based on what? The fact that rarely any game ever has been deleted from the service? The fact that shit like AirControl and many other not even games are being "published" on Steam?
And yeah.. Steam is not a fucking publisher so it cannot "publish" anything. It's a store. Pretty outdated one too.
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