Those of you who follow the gaming community might remember the announcement of a little game called Hatred back in October. The trailer was for a game about mass-murdering innocents and quite rightfully caused controversy. Some said that the developer Destructive Creations should be free to create whatever they wished, while others noted that it probably wouldn’t do much to undo the stereotype of video games being seen as the cause of many a violent incident in the past.

Fast-forward to the 15th of this month and a Greenlight went up on Steam for the game, which within a couple of hours shot up the list of Steam Greenlight’s most wanted games to become seventh. The reason it didn’t get any higher is because Valve took the decision to remove the Greenlight page with Valve’s Doug Lombardi being quoted as saying, “Based on what we’ve seen on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we’ll be taking it down.”

To their credit Destructive have not thrown a fit about the decision saying that they “fully respect Valve’s decision” and remaining confident that their game has a market. Given that it had over 13k up votes when it was taken down, they have a point. Their full statement is below:

“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 giving the below as reasons behind their decision:

 

“’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.’

 

“Even though games like Manhunt or Postal are still available on Steam we of course fully respect Valve’s decision, as they have the right to do so. In the same time we want to assure you that this won’t in any way impact the game’s development, game’s vision or gameplay features we’re aiming for. The game is still to be released in Q2 2015 as planned.

 

“Moreover we don’t treat this as a failure because yet again this showed us a huge community support we’re totally overwhelmed with. After only a couple of hours Greenlight campaign being live, Hatred gathered 13,148 up votes and ended up on a #7 on Top 100 list.

 

“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.

 

“The whole situation only pushes us forward to go against any adversity and not to give up. It also makes us want to provide our fans Hatred pre-orders sooner, as many of you have asked for them.

 

“At the end of the day you, gamers will judge if we were able to do a game that’s simply fun to play.”

What do you think? Were Valve right to remove the Greenlight, or should Hatred be allowed within the Steam Store? Tell us below in the comments!