Hatred steam page is up, they kept the AO rating, first steam game to be sold with such rating

[Mutant1988]

Patronizing doesn't come into it either. Steam's customers have always been able to decide for themselves whether they want to buy a game or not. And Steam can decide for itself whether it wants to sell a game or not.

Such a decision is always made for a REASON and there's very few reasons for not taking good money for the nearly effortless service of copying digital content, legally.
Such a reason would always have to come down to some kind of moral objection to the content of the work, which in this case is entirely fictional and to be viewed on private computers, so that would be patronization, pure and simple.

Since Valve made the smart choice for effortless money here, I cannot fault them and the above is hypothetical ofcourse.

I'm inclined to agree with this sentiment.

The owner of the market do of course control what to sell on their market. It could very well be so that Valve do not allow the content because it fears that the business it would lose (Due to perceived immorality) would be far greater than the one they would gain.

Consider how much porn is freely available and how difficult it is for a paid pornographic product (Game, movie, whichever) to compete. The only way is to make it much more convenient, but then that would likely compromise the safeguards that stop kids from seeing the content.

Either way, I still think the moral objectors should examine why they think sex is so bad. Are they afraid that such content will have a detrimental effect? Then that's probably because you, the parent, is so judgemental about it. If everyone is told that sex is evil then everyone (Unless proven otherwise) will have a negative reaction to it.

Really though, if it's an adult, it should be perfectly fine to purchase it. What's the worst it can do? Incite masturbation or consensual intercourse? Oh, the horror.

If it does anything except that then there's bigger problems with the individual in question and society is just trying to shift the blame to an easy target.

I do believe that Steams policies are primarily in place for economic reasons. The stupid protests would lose them more money than these products would make.

 

[veloper]

Such a decision is always made for a REASON and there's very few reasons for not taking good money for the nearly effortless service of copying digital content, legally.
Such a reason would always have to come down to some kind of moral objection to the content of the work, which in this case is entirely fictional and to be viewed on private computers, so that would be patronization, pure and simple.

Since Valve made the smart choice for effortless money here, I cannot fault them and the above is hypothetical ofcourse.

I'm inclined to agree with this sentiment.

The owner of the market do of course control what to sell on their market. It could very well be so that Valve do not allow the content because it fears that the business it would lose (Due to perceived immorality) would be far greater than the one they would gain.

Consider how much porn is freely available and how difficult it is for a paid pornographic product (Game, movie, whichever) to compete. The only way is to make it much more convenient, but then that would likely compromise the safeguards that stop kids from seeing the content.

Either way, I still think the moral objectors should examine why they think sex is so bad. Are they afraid that such content will have a detrimental effect? Then that's probably because you, the parent, is so judgemental about it. If everyone is told that sex is evil then everyone (Unless proven otherwise) will have a negative reaction to it.

Really though, if it's an adult, it should be perfectly fine to purchase it. What's the worst it can do? Incite masturbation or consensual intercourse? Oh, the horror.

If it does anything except that then there's bigger problems with the individual in question and society is just trying to shift the blame to an easy target.

I do believe that Steams policies are primarily in place for economic reasons. The stupid protests would lose them more money than these products would make.

I was just focused on the OT game Hatred on Steam.

I think porn is a much trickier subject, where I'm more inclined to be careful.

The main difference is that porn usually uses real footage and that in some countries where Steam operates, even the imagined age of an entirely fictional, pornographic character can get you into legal troubles.

If a company doesn't want to have to worry about some textured polygons or cell-shaded surfaces, being 17 or 18 years old, supposedly, for fear of the law, then I can totally get behind not stepping into that business.

 

[Mutant1988]

I think porn is a much trickier subject, where I'm more inclined to be careful.

The main difference is that porn usually uses real footage and that in some countries where Steam operates, even the imagined age of an entirely fictional, pornographic character can get you into legal troubles.

If a company doesn't want to have to worry about some textured polygons or cell-shaded surfaces, being 17 or 18 years old, supposedly, for fear of the law, then I can totally get behind not stepping into that business.

Yeah, I suppose that's the kind of laws that really is entirely different from country to country. One single guideline wouldn't work.

I'm really just exploring the subjects for the sake of discussion. I'm just thinking that it would be good for producers of the less than explicit type of erotica if they could distribute through steam, solely as a matter of convenience for the makers. Mostly thinking about the non-censored versions of the visual novels that already made it onto the service.

But then again, it might be more convenient just to charge people through paypal and distribute it directly. Steam on the other hand would be a trusted retailer, which could have the effect of fewer people stealing these games instead of buying them.

 

[major_chaos]

Hatred is a vile little fantasy made by a bunch of vile, bitter little men (who are also ultra right wingers, just to make them even less likable) and the idea of it being influential is nauseating. About the only thing I can give the devs credit for is at least they stuck to writing Anders Brevic/Columbine massacre crossover fanfiction rather than going the live reenactment route.

As for the AO rating who cares? AO gets slapped on two things; actual porn and torture porn like Hatred. The first can be found in abundance on the internet, and the last thing Steam needs is its already nigh unusable front page being clogged with a deluge of shit tier porn games (and the ratio of good porn games to badly made/gross/horribly drawn ones is even worse than the good-bad ratio of normal games), nor do I particularly find the need to be reminded that rape porn is a thing every time I open the steam store.
And the second also exists elsewhere on the internet, even if I wish it didn't. Hostel and Human Centipede already did a lot to kill my faith in humanity, the world needs a interactive version about as much as it needs a Air Control 2.

So what exactly can AO on steam do for games other than making Rapelay and its putrid ilk mainstream enough to revitalize the long floundering moral panic?

 

[Fishyash]

Steam is under no obligation to sell anything they don't want to. There are other places to buy games.

Very true. But honestly with the games that Valve have let on their Steam page, Hatred doesn't really make their store look any worse than it already is. So the question is rather, is there any benefit to Steam NOT having this game in their store?

Anyways, this is probably going to be a one-time circumstance, as other people have said, it's only rated AO rather than M because of the mass-shooting premise. While some people may think it may lead to pornographic games to come on steam, I really doubt it will happen as a result of this game being on Steam.

In fact, it hardly effects Hatred's sales since the game is being sold on Steam anyway, so the game's rating is not really going to affect its success. If it wasn't on Steam, this rating would definitely hurt the game.

As I've said before, the premise itself isn't so bad, but the trailer monologue makes me think of this:


The game also looks dull (colours-wise), and for some reason they've made it an isometric shooter. Having that point kinda works against the premise since you're seeing the death and destruction from a more detached view rather than in the more intimate-looking first-person view.

 

[Callate]

Yeah, I mean really. How hard would it be to implement a age restriction system that specifically requires the holder of the credit card attached to the account and email and to have users specifically enable seeing these games in the store? Go ahead and add a secondary password to enable showing them at all in the games list and not run from the executable or at all offline, in case you have kids that play on your account.

Or hell, just have two accounts. Stop being an idiot.

So little Billy can't buy porn games on Steam? I suppose he will just have to browse the hundreds of millions of potentially malware infested porn sites and download questionable torrents instead then. You know what the best thing about that is parents? You are likely to never know that he does that. You can only suspect he did if he is stupid enough to get viruses on your computer.

The US needs to get over it's hang-ups about sexuality. Hell, Valve is based in the states - If they can get the sales of erotic games going that's more tax money to benefit everyone else.

...Not entirely sure what brought that on... I was just suggesting that a more legitimate AO rating might be useful, and not just on Steam. But that would first require an AO rating not making your game entirely unavailable to everyone through all major distribution channels. Whether brick-and-mortar stores or online distributors, a lot of parents seem to be decidedly un-curious about the actual content of the games they allow their children to play, especially in the face of even minor nagging; an "AO" rating would be a much clearer sign that, no really, you should think twice about letting your twelve-year-old play this game.

Steam allowing an AO game to be sold is a positive step in that direction. What I'm saying has nothing to do with more broadly imposed safeguards against minors accessing such content, a'la credit card checks, passwords, ID checks, or other such verification; just general awareness.

 

[Mutant1988]

...Not entirely sure what brought that on... I was just suggesting that a more legitimate AO rating might be useful, and not just on Steam. But that would first require an AO rating not making your game entirely unavailable to everyone through all major distribution channels. Whether brick-and-mortar stores or online distributors, a lot of parents seem to be decidedly un-curious about the actual content of the games they allow their children to play, especially in the face of even minor nagging; an "AO" rating would be a much clearer sign that, no really, you should think twice about letting your twelve-year-old play this game.

Steam allowing an AO game to be sold is a positive step in that direction. What I'm saying has nothing to do with more broadly imposed safeguards against minors accessing such content, a'la credit card checks, passwords, ID checks, or other such verification; just general awareness.

The lack of safe guards is what is going to cause friction though.

There's a reason why the porn section in video stores were (usually) sectioned off from the rest of the store. Specifically so that minors shouldn't even know that such products exist. I can understand why parents would not want their children to ask about this sort of thing, since explaining some things to children can be very difficult, just because they haven't developed enough to understand certain concepts.

Doesn't excuse a thoroughly negative outlook on mature subjects like sex and violence though. I think that causes more issues than anything else. Parents actually learning how to discuss these things and reason about their merits and negatives (As real and fictional concepts alike) with their teenage children would probably solve a whole lot of issues in the world.

But until that happens, parents will insist on retailers shouldering responsibility to protect their offspring because they are too lazy and ignorant to do so themselves. That's a simplification, but the amount of vitriol the moral crusaders spew warrant it.

It's because retailers are pressured to restrict the access to the content that big retailers simply don't bother stocking AO titles. It's just too much of a hassle to do so and even if they do, they might lose customers in areas that are far more profitable. The owner of the company could also just have the same moral objections.

I do think it's a helluva lot easier to restrict such content on a digital market and I think that's something that should be taken advantage of. There is a market and it's not wrong to exploit it.

Adult Only games should be possible to sell to Adults Only without it destroying civilization itself.