Hatred Pulled from Steam Greenlight by Valve

Hatred was first introduced to the world earlier this October—a game where you play a psychopath on a rampage, shooting cops and innocents alike for the sole purpose of spreading death and chaos. A mass-murder simulator, I suppose—one whose trailer reveled in the bloodshed and actively sought to court controversy for the free publicity it would offer.

Well, it worked. The game is far enough along in development that it appeared on Steam Greenlight recently, and was so recognized and desired by fans that out of 2,195 games in Steam Greenlight, it was the seventh most popular, most voted for game of the bunch. But controversy is a double-edged sword—and while the public outcry may have been instrumental in getting the game the recognition it needed to get greenlit, it was also the force that made Valve decide to remove the game from the Greenlight program and state that it would refuse to sell the game, both now or in the future. Doug Lombardi, Valve's VP of marketing, said concisely:

"Based on what we've seen on Greenlight, we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we'll be taking it down."

For what it’s worth, the developer, Destructive Creations, had this to say:

“we don’t treat this as a failure because yet again this showed us a huge community support we’re totally overwhelmed with… This is the best proof for us that there are diehard Hatred fans out there waiting for this game to be released. And that we need to keep going to deliver them a game that offers exciting and challenging gameplay.”

They also said they respect Valve’s decision not to sell the game, even though it currently does sell games like Postal and Manhunt.

I’m glad the developers are taking this in stride. It would be easy—almost expected—of them to go on a tangent and make a big fuss over the matter, as indie developers seem prone to do… strange that a game that seems so immature would be the one to take setbacks with the greatest stride. Still, they’ll need more than a little luck if they want to sell their game off Steam; like it or not, Steam still dominates the PC marketplace these days…

EDIT: Hatred is back up on Steam today.   According to Destructive Creations, they emailed Gabe Newell on the issue and he agreed that it was a poor decision, and thus reinstated the game.  So there's that.