I can't blame Steam for shutting this game down. Hatred seems to have been created to be controversial. In the wake of the many well-publicized school/mall/theater/etc. shootings that have taken place in the U.S. in the past few years, the game seems designed to mimic these public shootings. That is, of course, in poor taste, and will create bad publicity for any entity that publishes or sells Hatred. But Steam would have even bigger problems if it decided to sell the game. Hatred is sure to mimic real-life shootings to an uncomfortable degree. The fact of the matter is that many people will see it as a training program for real mass shootings.

When the Columbine school shootings happened over a decade ago, many people blames Marilyn Manson for creating music that supposedly encouraged the two shooters to go on their spree. Most people now view that claim as ridiculous, and the publicity surrounding claims that music/t.v./movies/games can actually make impressionable young people violent has waned, as it should. The connection between violent media and real life violence was always tenuous at best. But if its trailer is any indication, Hatred isn't just trying to be controversial; it's setting itself up to be the exact game that would persuade people to become shooters if such a thing is possible, or to be a mock up of that hypothetical game if such a thing is not. Either way, families who lose loved ones in mass shootings are going to take the Hatred devs (and possible whatever entity might have sold the game to a shooter) to court if it can be proven that a shooter played the game before his rampage. And the Hatred devs would not earn a lot of jury sympathy. I assume that Steam's legal team advised Steam to stay far away from Hatred, and Steam, not being staffed by complete idiots, complied.

I want to point out one more thing. A lot of gamers (including me) have very strong reactions against censorship, and I think that's healthy. But by refusing to sell Hatred, Steam (and perhaps GOG, too), is not censoring Hatred; it is refusing to sell a game that any of its customers can easily pick up on another web site (if and when the game comes out), and it is acting upon its instincts for self=preservation. Steam is a business. Let's face it. If Steam thought that it could profit by releasing Hatred without being sued or getting embroiled in a public relations nightmare, Steam would sell Hatred. I am also cynical about the Hatred devs. They couldn't have been blindsided by this decision. They knew it was at least a possibility that major sales outlets would refuse to sell their game, and they are surely prepared to use that publicity in one way or another. If nothing else, they'll sell a bunch of games to free speech supporters who would not have touched Hatred under other circumstances. However this shakes out, Hatred's studio will get more publicity for creating a lone-gunman-on-a-rampage game than an unknown studio would get from creating almost a game about literally any other subject.