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It looks like an edgy game for the sake of being edgy, but I'm actually surprised by the backlash so far.

Have hyper realistic character models and responsive AI improved that much that people have developed a stronger moral compass? or is everyone just getting older and getting more wary of their moral responsibility as adults.

And what point is the threshold between good taste and too far? Hotline Miami has edgy senseless violence but because of it's graphical style it's passed over, Tomb Raider has horrific looking deaths but they're few and far between and mostly down to pitfall like hazards, Red Dead Redemption had an achievement for tying someone to the train tracks and splatting them, but that's seen more as overdramatic film violence, then there's games like Sleeping Dogs that let you break the legs of a random pedestrian, bundle them into a car and then drive it into the ocean.

This is the same thing that I see a lot of people doing without taking certain things to mind. Most all other games before didn't make the GOAL of the thing to murder civilians. Hotline Miami was brutal, yes - but it wasn't really civilians you were fucking with and yes, the art style was chosen for a reason. That's good game design, not a bunch of fuckwits trying to be 2 edgy 5 me. You CAN do things in a lot of open world games but it's not the point and it punishes you within the confines of the game (usually) for doing them. It's not a case of anything changing - it's the way that it has always been.

And people going "OH WELL POSTA-" yeah, that wasn't right either. It doesn't change anything about THIS particular case.

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The increasing amount of dumb people who are determined to play and support this game because "fuck cenzorship!" is baffling. Some of the arguments used by them are getting increasingly ridiculous like someone suggesting everyone bagging the game is a hypocrite because they probably walled their sims characters up in a room and let them die. Or the person that said violent games like this one are great stress relievers and it's been proven that since games like these became more realistic, the number of violent crimes in society have decreased.

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  • 1 month later...

SO the game appeared on Steam Greenlight today, and then was pulled for "offensive content"

http://kotaku.com/controversial-shooting-game-pulled-from-steam-greenligh-1671383158

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Hopefully GOG or a retailer who cares about the consumers sells it.

"Cares about the consumer"? C'mon, I don't agree with pulling it for the sake of pulling it, but don't throw around silly phrases like that. Steam is more consumer-friendly than most other companies. Plus they probably pulled it because it's been reported by other users.

Really though, as much as I don't care about it being pulled because it looks like a shit heap of a game and a cheap attempt at getting 13 year olds who think it's shocking to buy it, I don't agree with it actually being pulled. Games don't kill people, people who are unhinged will find their excuse to kill no matter what, be it violent entertainment, money, religion, fame, or whatever. Really, what would be a nice gesture from this company would be to donate a percentage of profits to mental health charities, at least that would make them seem a little more tactful rather than the lowest common denominator crap peddlers they've come across as.

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I fall in the middle on this me. On one hand I don't believe censoring games based on their content is okay and I hate when games are used as a scapegoat for serial killers and spree killers but on the other hand, this game is exploiting those same exact people. This isn't life GTA where you can decide to go on a spree kill, or in the case of GTA V its a downright side mission, or you can actually play the game without killing innocent people if you have the patience to drive slowly and be careful. The whole point of the game is that you are going around killing people. It's one thing for an underground game like Super Columbine RPG that's released for free but to actually attempt to market the game and have it sold on programs like Steam is just something else entirely. Steam would look bad for giving them a platform to distribute the game, so I don't blame them for not wanting to be associated with the product because of the bad press associated with it.

The game looks like crap anyways. Unlike Postal, it's not done in a mocking way. It's made to look serious. This is like if someone were to make a game where you play a terrorist and its your job to hijack planes and shit. No need for it.

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I feel this is only serving to play into the developers hands. I've said before that it seems too shitty and cliche to be anything other than them trying to make headlines and garner attention, seems like it would have been better all round to just ignore them and not put their name in lights so that this game could have slipped into obscurity.

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Even though this isn't censorship, there are very rare times when censorship is a good thing and is needed.

This is one of them.

Free speech means that sometimes you're going to get offended, and all censoring ever does is make the censoree feel even more justified because it makes it seem as if they have something worth saying.

Ellis is dead on, if the idiot bloggers hadn't posted and Steam hadn't pulled the game, this would just be another shitty forgotten indie title, it's sad (though not unexpected) to see people being manipulated and playing into their hands.

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Oh please, the morons making this are hardly geniuses - I think just about anyone could figure out what this is exactly the kind of thing that would happen, even the people who are writing the articles but it still raises a discussion point and puts the idiots making the game on blast.

Steam absolutely had to pull it too, there's no foul in doing what they did - I wouldn't want that kind of stigma down on a company that I was running. Should've been singled out and removed before it had a chance to finish Greenlight anyways.

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If Walmart refused to sell a book on how sex with kids is great or the Anarchist cookbook or a Holiday calendar collecting the best ISIS beheadings, I don't think anyone would be being crying about freedom of speech or censorship. I fully expect anyone who thinks this game should be sold in stores due to reasons of censorship to be on board with all retailers having to sell every single product that appears before them, including the aforementioned products. I'm sure NAMBLA would love to hear that you support them.

There is this widespread myth about censorship and sticking up for the guys who are getting their voices silenced by these big bad retailers. Retailers on a daily basis chose not to stock certain products for a whole host of reasons. Walmart doesn't sell some candles because they smell terrible. They don't stock some books because they don't sell. It isn't an issue of freedom of speech or censorship. It's the idea that some stores don't stock certain products because they don't want to.

I really feel when this issue crops up with gamers, they look so silly when they get into the bluster of calling things censorship and hypocrtical. Retailers all the time force individuals creating products to alter them in order to be sold or just flat out refuse to sell them for a variety of reasons that no one would ever call censorship. If I created a turd candle and got rejected at Walmart, none of these freedom of speech gamers would take issue with Walmart not selling my turd candle. They'd say "well, you are a fucking idiot because you tried to sell a candle that smells like a turd". Hatred is the turd candle.

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Censorship is a much deeper issue than that though, and it's not like gamers are the only people to get pissy that a piece of media doesn't fit the criteria to be allowed to be sold uncut.

Film and literature have been constantly pushing the envelope for decades when it comes to the art/bad taste debate, and when you consider that films such as '120 days of Sodom' and 'A Serbian Film' have passed despite some of their content easily crossing the barrier of bad taste, it seems strange for a video game to become completely irredeemable.

The real reason why I feel it's been taken down from Steam is because as it's still in alpha/beta it's not in it's finished form and thus cannot be rated by PEGI or the US board, so if there's a chance that it becomes 'unrated' then it'll become a problem to be sold on steam. This naturally doesn't matter to games like Minecraft or Terraria or whatever that are going to fall roughly in the spectrum of 3+ to 16+, but I don't think there's been a single obvious 18+ game in greenlight before now and that's probably why Steam is getting cold feet about allowing 'pre-orders' it before it's rated.

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Talking about stuff like A Serbian Film doesn't make sense here - it was made, it's sold... some places. But you're not going to walk down the street and find it on a random stand and you're not going to find it at Wal-Mart.

No one is telling these guys that they can't make their game, no one is stopping them. Places have looked at what they are doing and consciously said "You know what, I'm not interested in that." and that is entirely within their rights. Just because someone creates something, it doesn't mean that the world or OTHER businesses are instantly obligated to sell it for them. That's not the way the world works and it sure as hell isn't the way that the world SHOULD work.

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