10 DUMBEST Video Game Controversies That Went Too Far
5. Everybody Hates Hatred
From the very second it was announced, Hatred came under fire for its ultraviolent content, with the game letting players assume the role of a mass-murderer who kills hundreds of humans in a manner of violent ways, simply because he wants to.
As well as being criticized by the gaming community at large, Epic Games asked developer Destructive Creations to remove the Unreal logo from the trailer, Valve pulled the game from Steam Greenlight, and video game marketplace GOG flat-out refused to sell it.
All this controversy made it seem like Hatred was going to cause riots in the streets, but predictably, when it eventually came out in June 2015, everyone realised that it was just a mediocre game that had leveraged shock value to generate some press.
It scored a 43/100 on Metacritic - with an equally-sucky 4.7 user score to match - and vanished from the conversation after barely causing a stir.
This situation echoed similarly overblown controversies surrounding games like Postal and GTA, and, seemingly realising that they were creating a fuss over nothing, Valve even u-turned on its decision to pull the game.