Controversy and video games often go hand in hand, and Hatred is the latest game to cross the proverbial line. Solely from its trailers on the Steam Greenlight page and its reveal trailer, it appears that Hatred is a “murder simulator.†This moniker given mainly due to its apparent lack of contextualization to its reasoning. Surely, there are plenty of games that have the player kill hordes of enemies, but the majority of those games frame the murder in such a way that makes it seem ok. There’s little to no difference of shooting a pixelated character as a gun-toting gangster than a hell-bent anti-social character, sans one having a minimal storyline attached to it. But, whether you feel the violence in Hatred is deplorable or simply mindless fun, the game is back on Steam Greenlight for good.
This past Monday, Steam pulled Hatred from Steam Greenlight, as Valve’s Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer, “Based on what we’ve seen on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we’ll be taking it down,†The decision, in a way, goes against the original basis of Steam Greenlight; letting the consumers of deem what should be on the marketplace via a voting system. Has it worked perfectly? Of course not, and there’s a strong argument that the voting system does has some flaws. But, that’s for the Steam users to decide. Gabe Newell has stepped in and allowed the game back on Greenlight. His note to the dev team and their response is below:
Hi, Jaroslaw.
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. Steam is about creating tools for content creators and customers.
Good luck with your game.
Gabe
and Destructive Creations Creative Director, JarosÅ‚aw ZieliÅ„ski’s reply to Gabe:
We’re extremelly [sic] happy to be back on Steam Greenlight! It’s hard to find proper words to describe what we all feel right now. It’s simply an amazing thing to get such a great news from Gabe Newell himself! THANKS A LOT GABE!
Should Hatred be allowed on Steam Greenlight? And should a company ever be allowed to block a game on their marketplace solely because it may be tasteless to a certain audience?
