You're right about the BPjM. They're not responsible for digitally distributed games. Still, games do get censored, particularly by the platforms which are able to distribute different builds to different countries – i.e. Steam.

Maybe that's what "we can't" indeed means: "We don't have the technical means of selective distribution, and can't risk a ban in one of the countries we distribute in".

Publishing older brutal games is no problem in comparison, because no ban for those is forthcoming.

It's clear enough in what direction the developers want to shove this. But I sincerely doubt that GOG sends rejection emails with two words to the topic...

/edit: Yeah, the game is blocked from Germany/Australia by the developer's request:

SENSATIONALIST REVIEW!! Corrupt journalist!! ;) ;)

Let's trust quality journalism instead. Like Jim Sterling (4 out of 10), Eurogamer Poland (50%) or Destructoid (5.5). ;)

The frequency with which the reviewers are missing the actually controversial content is very amusing. It's brought forward so often that the developer deemed it necessary to respond to the accusation in their forum: Strange how that "nothing special" vibe only surfaces after release...

Wow, that's a most cowardly move. Especially since if shit really were to hit the fan, they wouldn't be the ones in trouble, but the store selling it. Fucking rebels, sticking it to the man and bravely complying with local censorship laws that nobody ever cares to enforce in the realm of digital distribution. Let's assume for a moment that GOG did pick this game up for distribution. Let's also assume the game got banned in Germany for real. What's the German government going to do about it? Invade Poland?

For all their anti-SJW posturing, these guys opened my eyes as to what the real problem is: It's not the screeching hordes of offended-by-design tumblrinas, the asinine governments or corrupt games "journalists". It's cowardly devs who cave in to the whims of those groups. It's not like you can win with those three, so it's best to ignore them.

GOG might have done them a favour by rejecting this game, as it gave them even more unwarranted street cred.

Game rating of over 80%, yet median playtime is about 13 minutes. Those had to be brilliant 13 minutes.

Edit: Let's wait a week until it stabilizes a bit I suppose.

There's really no need to go overboard with this.

Valve has predicted problems with local censorship laws, and the Hatred devs have deemed the risk not worth the hassle. I really don't blame them for this, the problem still are the laws of the target countries.

As to what could happen: probably more than we think. Yes of course there are laws within the EU preventing GOG from distributing banned material to Germany. Yes of course a vendor who ignores these laws will deal with legal consequences (and GOG has been hit with legal consequences for lack of regional pricing already).

While the BPjM has no say in this, maybe the IARC does. I'm not that familiar with present laws because I'm primarily interested in less violent games – with a few exceptions, starting with Resident Evil 2 in 1997.

As to the general haterade against "SJW", publishers and governments...

We can safely say that the Hatred devs did their best to deliver an "anti-SJW" game. The result is mixed. Going by the definition of an "SJW game" found on reaxxion in a March 2015 article, Hatred has all the simplistic gameplay mechanics of an "SJW game" (ohhhhhhh), yet definitely doesn't have the "obsession with visuals" that reaxxion finds so characteristic of "SJW games". Also, plenty of failure states and no shoehorned-in social topics, in fact no sensible story at all.

What do you say, those are arbitrary, extremist criteria and do not describe a coherent type of game? Agreed. But that's what happens when people are using "SJW" as an abbreviation for a whole bunch of perceived, clearly distinct, independent developments within game culture.

For what it's worth: Hatred and its advertisement should have served as a lesson for a whole lot of people. It should not have gotten any kind of attention whatsoever, because it's a thoroughly uninteresting game, foreseeably so. It became relevant when the devs tried to make it look as if the game was the pinnacle of a certain counter culture, and it became relevant when some journalists started perceiving it as such.

We never needed either bandwagon.

Actually they could have gog.com blacklisted, meaning it would disappear from all search results from Google or Bing in Germany. Which would be seriously hampering GOG's business. It has been done, mostly for porn or extremists' sites, but some years ago stores like gameware.at (who ship to Germany) faced this problem too.

Sure, it's their right to choose that distrib in those countries is not worth the trouble.

It's still very amusing to see the devs are preemptively censoring themselves after the whole "GOG is censoring Hatred!" drama on this very thread. ^^

THAT it definitely is. ;)

was checking my steam account and guess what i saw?
hatred on steam :D

so it seems the steamers are selling this weird game afterall...

i also read some countries have blocked the game ...

If the SJWs here were a bit less dumb and lazy, and a bit less messed up in the head from sniffing glue, they could find many ways to criticize this game without having to invent intentions, past statements and other lies about Destructive Creations. Hatred is one of the most honestly marketed game I've seen, and this just proves that outraged persons should simply be dismissed as nutjobs without a real cause.

sorry for sniffing glue... nah wait, i'm pretty sure the coppers will throw me in a lockup right now if i was sniffing glue. this is singapoor. stop lying, man. i dun wanna go to jail for your reverse-SJW heresy!!!
singapoor censors might try to ban it if the devs added an alien-sex DLC.

I'm not sure I understand the logic of self-induced censorship. They'd likely get one eventually anyway, giving them the chance for more media exposure AFTER the initial outrage cries die out a bit.

Unless they were trying to protect preorders, I'm not sure if Steam would've removed the legit keys if it were forced to remove the game from certain regions by government itself. But it seems like very cheap attempt of grabbing more headlines at the expense of users.

After all, Desura doesn't have region lock at all, so what the hell does it even do, but confuse people? And then there's this post that... I'd expect from EA or Steam, not an indie dev (requires login, see attach).

As far as the game itself, it's a decent twin stick shooter with tactical elements. It's not gonna redefine the genre, nor be the best game eva. Pretty cool graphic style (IMO), awesome destructive environment/effects, fits nicely with Behemoth in the background. It serves it's purpose, and fits it's price tag, I'm happy with it.

Hopefully they'll improve performance and release mod system they promised, I'd be quite interested in how they plug it in UE from dev perspective, as well as making my own mischiefs with it.

a ban for alien -sec DLC ? thats would be ridiculous :D
i can imagine bans for other reasons but for alien? (unless they mean the other alien :D

(like the police: " i am an alien, an alien in new york ...")
i assume that the rest of european countries will accept the game ? minus germany ofcourse
its weird that france is not mentioned to ban it.

Lucius, I forgot that one, that one was mor or less my idea.