Hatred is back on Steam Greenlight

Destructive Creations' controversial shooter Hatred is back on Steam Greenlight, just two days after Valve removed it without any reason other than "based on what we've seen" — likely referring to the game's premise which puts you in the shoes of a deranged psychopath on a murderous killing spree.

A teaser trailer that accompanied the Steam Greenlight announcement highlighted widespread massacres featuring brutal stabbing and other violent executions. At one point in the announcement trailer, the nameless character, donning a leather trench coat, sticks a pistol into a woman's mouth and pulls the trigger.

Destructive Creations was pretty accepting of Valve's decision, but called into question the company's stance on creative freedom and equal treatment for different games. The developer pointed out that in just 11 hours, Hatred garnered over 13,000 upvotes and was ranked #7 on the Top 100 list.

Stepping in today, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell emailed Destructive Creations' Creative Director Jarosław Zieliński, apologizing for the situation, and brought the game back to public voting on Steam Greenlight. Newell didn't attempt to explain the situation or why the game was originally pulled, but did apologize to the developer.

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

"We're extremelly happy to be back on Steam Greenlight!" Zieliński said in response to Gabe's message. "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!"

In the seven hours since being restored on Steam Greenlight, Hatred is already on the #1 position among 2,167 other Greenlight games. It has received 27,016 upvotes. Hatred may not be the type of game that I enjoy playing, but I recognize the importance of creative freedom and expression. For that reason, I am glad to see Hatred back on Steam Greenlight.