Super surprised and shocked here. I didn’t expect people to buy into Hatred. The monologues that main character gives… it’s cheesier than the ‘gore’ from Dead Alive: Braindead, and yet it got voted in with 93% of votes for and 7% against! As if that wasn’t shocking enough, Valve also bought into the fakeness of the game, and removed it for being overly controversial and violent.
Sure… that totally believable character and that wonky cinematic 3rd person camera is sooo controversial… not even remotely as graphic as the plethora of games where you commit genocide in first person view with a more realistic character. I’m convinced that maker of that game just successfully trolled Valve, big time.
Discuss.
–edit
Gabe Newell did not find the criteria internally stated for the removal of Hatred justified, and thus restored its position on greenlight. You may now also reference this event in discussing the reception of Hatred, and how Gabe Newell is seeing through the cheese.
Are you familiar with TotalBiscuit? He made a video response to this today, listing the following games that are available on steam right now that allow, require or reward you for killing innocent people in violent ways.
Postal 1&2
ManHunt
GTA 1-5
Far Cry 2-4
Hitman (all of them, lol)
Assassin’s Creed
Yea, their platform, their choice… but what was the criteria for removing the game? 93% of the votes were for it. It’s senseless for them to stock these games and call this one out for violating any criteria they could pose as their answer for taking it down… It’s a sad day for gaming.
I think the creation of Hatred itself was a sad day for gaming.
Stupid shock-art like that doesn’t normally get so much publicity. It was made to be as #%^ed up as possible just for the sake of being #%^ed up.
Right? Whats more stupid is the mob that’ll rise up against Valve for doing that and feel sorry for the whackos making the game. Totally going to be in their favor.
It’s not an entirely new concept in games either. Like was mentioned in that TotalBiscuit video, there are AT LEAST several other games that are just as bad, and have been available on Steam for a long time.
I personally wouldn’t put Assassin’s Creed or probably even Hitman in that list, but Postal is pretty messed up, and I’ve heard some things about Manhunt.
As far as I know though, they just never got this level of attention. I at least had never heard much about them before.
The whole thing should’ve just been swept under the rug as the work of some harmless fringe lunatics.
Throwing it out onto the forefront for the whole world to see on a regular basis was the last thing that should’ve happened. It’s too much of a ridiculous piece of crap to deserve so much media attention boosting it.
Exactly. That’s why I was surprised by the greenlight stats, and then more shocked by Valve’s decision lol. It’s such a blatant attention grab I feel like child beauty pageants have more of a right to exist…
Precisely. It’s bad enough it was in greenlight, but Valve’s decisions are now going to give it immense popularity and exposure, even though it’s pretty much garbage. It already had 93% yes votes, and now people are going to feel bad for the creators lol.
Same, I never heard of it until I first saw it appear on the Unity forums with people asking if it was too violent or whatever. Violence in games isn’t a controversial issue, because games are art (so expressions are free and unlimited) and games do not affect the real world in any way.
Before this topic gets too big and the point gets lost - I don’t support the game, I just think it has the same right to exist as the other games listed for their allowed and rewarded violence against random people. Let’s just all agree to dislike it because it’s poorly made and composed, not because it’s controversial.
The problem now is Valve has set a precedent for curation based on politics. Valve is perfectly fine with someone selling a completely broken piece of shit on the store (because they don’t give a shit about quality control), but if you dare do something they don’t like, it’ll be dropped faster than you can blink.
No one could really say with certainty that the game got greenlit because of all the publicity surrounding it.
As stupid as the game itself is, it does look well made, at least graphically.
Complete garbage games get greenlit all - the - time. Far worse ones than Hatred. No one knows how well Hatred actually plays, but assuming it isn’t a total train wreck I could easily place games like Bad Rats and Ride to Hell (a game which was actually able to bypass greenlighting all together) as greater affronts to the Steam market.
It’s gotten so bad, it’s not even merely an issue anymore of crappy games getting greenlit.
There’s been a recent surge of douchy hipsters releasing DELIBERATELY crappy games just to be ironic, and actually being successful.
Yet somehow it was more important for Valve to crackdown on this. Because of politics.
I can see from the trailer that the camera following the player does so like the cinematic view from GTA when driving. It’s like one of those camera turtles from the super mario universe got a bit drunk before showing up to work lol
Maybe unity paid for it to be taken down, since it was made with unreal
But this is a serious issue. It’s not even that it’s something that they don’t like… they were definitely pressured to have it taken down. Look at the things you can do to people in GTA V, but it’s not going anywhere. Look at the high profile kills you can do to innocent people in assassin’s creed. Heck, in farcry 4 you can throw a piece of raw meat at an innocent old lady and then watch a tiger or something come by and tear her apart. Valve’s reason to take this down, if one ever surfaces, is going to be very disappointing
Do you find this more inappropriate than the level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 where you play as a Russian terrorist in a small gang and walk through an airport with your objective being to cause terror and kill as many people as possible with your LMG? You weren’t even allowed to run, you were forced to walk alongside your comrades as they mowed down practically everyone in sight. How is that more objectionable than playing as a *spontaneous mass murderer?
If morals were a physical substance rather than a mental construct, this game wouldn’t even exist. But they aren’t, so it does Morals are relative. It’s even up to us as individuals to adopt a conscience while growing up. If you consider this game a breaking point for people on the lower spectrum of morality, you must not have ever heard of postal. In that game, you can throw gasoline on people, burn them alive, and then pee on their corpses. That’s a bit more psychotic than Hatred can ever hope to be.
*spontaneous mass murderer - you’re playing as some no-name loser with bad hair and social issues leading to a sudden desire and actuation of that desire to go on a rampage. In that call of duty level, you’re part of a more believable group with a more believable and real motive and you know it was premeditated because of the preparations involved to smuggle machine guns into an airport on what was very clearly a busy day with a lot of civilians.
You can skip the level in COD:MW2, rest of the game you’re a good guy. Plus it’s mostly a MP game.
You can complete Postal1/2 without killing innocents, it’s focus is stupid humor.
The rest of the games mentioned, killing innocents is optional for realism.
Hatred’s whole focus is killing innocents, that’s crossing the line.
I wish it didn’t, but this is unrelated. This is more like a product getting attention it doesn’t deserve because the media shined a bright light on it in an attempt to censor it. It’s also raising questions that don’t need to be answered about games being art and on what criteria will major distributors censor art. According to @MurDocINC , that criteria is a very subjective duration and intent.
What separates Hatred from Postal? Killing civilians isn’t the main focus.
What separates the COD level from Hatred? It’s only that one level in which your goal is to kill civilians.
When you have subjective standards like these as your answer, it only raises more questions. If Infinity Ward published that level as standalone dlc where the entire game is that one level, would it be removed from Steam? If Postal had a level where you couldn’t progress without killing a few innocent people, would it be removed from Steam? If Hatred added more content that wasn’t related to killing at all, would it be allowed on Steam? The lines are unclear, and at the end of all of this, Hatred will sell better than ever because of all of the media attention. It’s a crap game, it should die because it’s crap, not because the content is disliked by some people.
Hatred has the same gameplay to any game in which you play as the antagonist / villain. Would stubbs the zombie make it on steam? Your prey in that game is primarily innocent people… who you kill by eating them. That’s like Hatred if it featured cannibalism!
You keep repeating this. Have you played the game in order to make that judgement? If not, why keep repeating it? Your opinion about what’s right and wrong doesn’t make a game crap. Lousy game-play, bad story, bugs, etc. make a game crap.
You dislike the game’s content and you want it to die.
I had no idea that this thing even existed except for the fact that you made a thread here to tell us all how bad it is and that it shouldn’t be getting any attention, and that people giving it attention shouldn’t.
Where in CoD is your goal to kill civilians? I remember that mission that made the news where you’re undercover with an organization who’s killing civilians, but your stated goal there is to “maintain cover”. It’s deliberately a tough decision, it’s deliberately confronting, it’s set up such that you feel bad about the idea of killing civilians, and whether or not you decide to kill civilians makes zero difference to the outcome.
You’re a good guy in No Russian, too. The undercover operative who was passing intel about the upcoming terrorist attack? It’s that guy. I can understand the media beating it up with misinformation, I thought that fellow developers would at least check it out for themselves…
Violence is violence. There are no tiers of acceptability to it. The instant you justify and condone one form violence is the moment you lose any moral high ground to say another form of violence is bad.
If this was skinned with zombies, would anyone care? Fuck NO! There are games like that which are more violent that come out every other week, and no one gives a shit. You’re trying to eat an entire cake, but complaining that the cherry is what’s going to make you fat.
Hmm, so someone who defends themselves (lets say it’s even non-lethal and even non-injurious for the sake of argument) from direct and severe harm is the same as someone who commits genocide? The real world isn’t black and white like that.
Morals are relative. It’s even up to us as individuals to adopt a conscience while growing up. If you consider this game a breaking point for people on the lower spectrum of morality, you must not have ever heard of postal. In that game, you can throw gasoline on people, burn them alive, and then pee on their corpses. That’s a bit more psychotic than Hatred can ever hope to be.