Valve has decided not to distribute a controversial PC game via its Steam platform. The game is called Hatred and is developed by a Polish developer called Destructive Creations. It's an isometric action game in which you play a suicidal mass murderer who gleefully slaughters civilians. The game successfully achieved Greenlight status on Steam yesterday - however just hours later it was shown the red card and removed.
Hatred was announced back in October. You can see the launch trailer below, which sets the tone of the game:
"My name is not important. What is important is what I'm going to do. I just 'flipping' hate this world and the human worms feasting on its carcass… I will put in the grave as many as I can. It's time for me to kill. It's time for me to die. My genocide crusade begins here…"
Then you see the protagonist open fire with a machine gun in what looks like a book store café, later he shoots, slashes and stabs various random people both from a distance and graphically up close. It's quite a horrible thing to watch. However I've embedded it below for your convenience.
Even at the trailer launch time the above video was edited to remove both Unreal Engine trademarks and New York Police Department logos.
Perhaps surprisingly the game achieved Greenlight status yesterday. In a few hours Hatred became No.7 from nearly 2,200 games in Steam Greenlight rankings. However that Greenlight status also didn't last more than a few hours. On its Facebook page Destructive Games wrote "Dear Hatred fans, As you know today we’ve launched our Steam Greenlight campaign for Hatred. Unfortunately after couple of hours Steam shut it down".
The developers revealed the communication from Valve was simply as follows: "We wanted you guys to know that based on what we see on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we’ll be taking it down." Destructive Games went on to say that it respected Valve's decision and reassured fans that the game development would go on, with the game expected be released in Q2 2015, as planned.
Do readers think that Valve was right to remove this game or should it be allowed alongside other violent misanthropic games like Manhunt and Postal?
