After popping up on Steam Greenlight earlier this week, Destructive Creations’ controversial shooter Hatred was pulled by Valve, who said that based on what they’d seen of the game they “would not publish Hatred on Steam.”
After two days of free publicity for Destructive Creations, and a tonne of debate about censorship and discussion as to what exactly Valve’s criteria for deciding a game is too offensive to sell actually is, the company appears to have changed its mind. Hatred is back on Greenlight.
I think the main problem here is Valve’s terribly ambiguous guidelines for what they won’t allow on Greenlight. The FAQ simply says that games “must not contain offensive material”. Not terribly specific. When you’ve got titles like Postal and Manhunt available on your platform already, not to mention the hundreds of other games where you blast people into pieces, it seems like double standards to decide to ban even a particularly grim game like Hatred. I mean, the risible, pathetic and undoubtedly “offensive” Duke Nukem Forever is still on there, after all.
So while I’m not keen on Hatred’s brand of attention-seeking, nu-metal posturing myself, I think it’s probably the right decision from Valve to allow it to be sold. Perhaps if the company wants to be more picky about which games it sells, they should come up with a more stringent set of guidelines as to what is or isn’t acceptable.
Whatever the case, it’s been some nice free publicity for developer Destructive Creations. Hatred is expected to release sometime in the first half of next year.
