By now you’ve (unfortunately) heard of Hatred, a game that has set a new milestone for… well, I honestly can’t say, but it’s not something anyone should be striving to raise the bar for. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn then that Epic, which owns Unreal Engine, the middleware Hatred is being made with, has asked developer Destructive Creations to drop Epic’s logo from its marketing materials.
You see the Epic logo everywhere, because it’s used to make a lot of modern games. Usually, this sort of advertising is good for Epic, but it doesn’t take vigorous deducing to figure out why the company might have an issue with it being attached to Hatred.
Polygon’s Michael McWhertor approached Epic for comment and received this in reply:
“Epic Games isn’t involved in this project,” a statement from the company reads. “Unreal Engine 4 is available to the general public for use ‘for any lawful purpose,’ and we explicitly don’t exert any sort of creative control or censorship over projects. However, the video is using the trademarked Unreal Engine 4 logo without permission from Epic, and we’ve asked for the removal of our logo from all marketing associated with this product.”
An update to McWhertor’s story provides the following response from Jarosław Zieliński, Hatred‘s creative director:
“Epic Games has all the legal rights to issue such a request,” Zieliński said. “They’ve contacted me in a friendly manner and asked for the logo removal. Following their request I’ve removed it from the YouTube version and will remove it from the press version of our trailer ASAP so everyone is happy.”
Epic Games distances itself from ultraviolent mass-murder game Hatred (update) [Polygon]
Comments
58 responses to “Epic Asks Hatred Developer To Stop Using Its Company Logo”
What a shame and a waste in my opinion. The gameplay, visuals and style just look amazing…. But the concept (by which I mean what the game is “about”) is just disgusting and disturbing.
please tell me, what is the game about?
Taken straight from wiki:
The player-character is a mass-killing villain who hates humanity and begins a “genocidal crusade” to kill innocent civilians and police officers.
What else would you like to know good sir?
havent watched the trailer and im not going to watch the trailer, but really if its so far and shocking, then why the hell are we even posting about it. and whoop de fucking doo twitter is in an uproar. who bloody well cares what wankers on twitter have to say anyway
Because it’s gaming news on a website about news in games and thus relevant to the site’s purpose of reporting gaming news?
While there’s a kneejerk reactions of ‘OH ITS SHOCKING’ I might remind people that movies such as Rampage (Uwe Boll movie that’s actually widely praised) and the SAW series exist that cover this sort of topic and they haven’t ruined the fabric of society… this is just this generations ‘Postal’.
Well this is basically my opinion, but it seems unpopular to voice it so I’ve been avoiding the topic
I hear you on that one. It’s getting ridiculous though with the overreaction.
Friday the 13th : Many innocents killed each and every movie
SAW : Almost every person is innocent who dies asides maybe a few arbitrary crimes and occasionally a major crime.
RAMPAGE 1 and 2: A literal murder spree where dozens of innocents are gunned down for the viewers pleasure. (I don’t care what anyones opinion is here on it, the movie was actually celebrated as a ‘good movie’)
Heat: Pacino and co. rob banks, kill cops who are good people.
GTA: You kill police officers. Good people. Police officers are upholding the law, trying to stop you, a criminal, a piece of shit, the scum of society. You’re a piece of shit in this game. A murderer. Nothing more. You help distribute drugs. You murder people. Yes you have an ‘apparent choice’ but go pull the other leg on that one. Who hasn’t killed innocents in that for shits and giggles?
Fact is in our movies and games we like being the anti-hero or even the villain. Who hasn’t liked it at some point or other? Not ALL the time, but just sometimes. I personally adore Manhunt part 1, I loved it. But you’re a murderer in it, no excuses, you did it.
I’ll probably play this to see what it’s like, then look back at all the Kotaku comments and think to myself ‘what an overblown situation’. If we want to have the belief that games don’t influence people, that they don’t cause violence etc, then we have to stop being so goddamn ‘morally’ (I use that term loosely) outraged when stuff like this comes along.
I agree with you that there’s an overreaction; the only people who are really going to be effected by the game are those who want to play the game (and the reviews payed to play). But the examples you’ve cited don’t really hold up, aside from Rampage.
The point of Friday and Saw is that the audience relates to the people in danger, not the ‘monsters’ trying to kill them, that’s where the tension and thrills come from.
Heat and GTA are about criminals, but they have their own personal motivation and aren’t doing it just out of hate (aside from Trevor’s psychopathic issues). Michael in GTA doesn’t even want to get into the business, and the government is even more corrupt than they are.
You’re looking at the surface level of the movies. The swing towards the ‘anti hero’ support or even ‘villain support’ in cinema in the last few decades has become more and more prevalent. Now in the SAW movies we don’t root for anyone to defeat Jigsaw/Hoffman at all. We wait for the next victim. Infact we’re kind of disappointed when someone DOES get away.
GTA is highly valid, personal issues in the game are not even relevant, you’re a sociopath plain and simple. Backstories are nice, but you’re still murdering, robbing, looting etc.
It’s a swing in entertainment towards the bad, that we’ve seen in recent times, where the badguy wins, where the good guy doesn’t always get the girl, doesn’t always come up shining etc. Indeed the Govt may be corrupt in GTA, but there’s still everyday good cops in the game, faceless as they may be. You’re still murdering. It’s all about the justification. How much can you justify to yourself before you realise in game that you *deserve* to die? I mean I love GTA, it gets even better when you realise you’re the asshole in the game and act accordingly lol.
As far as Hatred goes, one can say that ‘yes the character is doing it out of ‘hatred’ but then that’s a motivation too’. That’s as valid a ‘motivation’ as any character. Friday 13th series stopped being about the people in danger after part 4 (1 – 4 were really 1 long movie) and when we hit 6 (the next real friday movie), we had zombie Jason and the audience was revelling in just how Jason would do it.
Point is, we love the murderer, we love the killer, we loved Freddy, we loved Jason, we loved Hoffman/Jigsaw and we love to support the badguy in these forms of entertainment. While Hatred probably doesn’t deserve the level of attention it’s getting, it’s definitely bringing that dark part of the human psyche to light and a lot of people are sure finding it uncomfortable.
“Now in the SAW movies we don’t root for anyone to defeat Jigsaw/Hoffman at all. We wait for the next victim. Infact we’re kind of disappointed when someone DOES get away.”
I’d go so far as to say that other than Hoffman, the Saw series wants you to sympathise with the killers on a number of levels. Jigsaw for his cancer and how medical staff dealt with it. Amanda for her survival story and past addictions she’s had to overcome. Dr Gordons survival in the first film and role in bringing down Hoffman. Even to an extent Jigsaws wife who while not a killer herself, knew more than she ever told police about. While it wasn’t always well done or especially believable as a motivation, even Jigsaws code to only go after people that were wasting theirs or other peoples kind of makes it out as if he’s some sort of saviour as opposed to just being purely sadistic.
In many ways the film often pains the people in the traps as being worse than those that set it all up, in an around about way. Hoffman’s the only one I feel didn’t have much of a story that one could sympathise with, but in a way that was intentionally done to further justify the actions of the other villains in the series and to make them seem less repulsive.
Well said. I agree Hoffman was the only one we didn’t sympathise with either, there was no real reason to. Some vague reason was given but only in the last moment in part 7. Others had full blown character arcs.
I have a strange feeling that people are being played by this game somehow, irrespective of the immediate reflection it brings to the notion of what we do in games – it seems to have a point and the developers do not just appear like childish, immature violence-mongers Kotaku seems to be portraying them as. I could be wrong but I don’t know – i’m just saving my moral judgement for a reasonable time.
See, this, this is a mature reaction to it. My attitude is ‘it exists, I’ll try it out and judge it when it’s released’. The first trailer is clearly designed to grab attention and shock. We’ll now see what happens later.
It exists, people don’t like it, they want to talk about how they don’t like it.
Not a mature reaction because you disagree with it?
I currently disagree with your opinion that Hatred should be compared the films you’ve listed. Each of those films conveys a commentary of the society and culture from which they sprang, there’s a self-awareness to the violence. Granted, I have seen those movies yet I have only seen a snippet of Hatred in which there is no apparent awareness.
I’m interested to see how Hatred develops, it would be fantastic if the game was something more than a retread of 90s social fear towards Metal heads, Goths, Alts, and other subcultures. However, that’s the only message being presented, and I’m all for communities dissecting that message until something better comes along.
There is more than a good chance this game will follow a similar vein, the creators were clearly anticipating the reaction to the trailer so are not completely ignorant of what they are depicting, not to mention the writing in the trailer is so terrible it almost has to be parody.
There is more that a good chance the game will feature a UFO ending similar to that of the Silent Hill series, because I want it to be that way.
One of the issues is that the tone of the trailer and the tone of the spokespeople for the studio leaves little room for the probability of parody. If they’re courting that serious image while holding the parody card close to their chest, well good on them for being purposefully inflammatory I guess.
It’s not a well thought out, mature reaction when it’s a knee jerk reaction, that’s why. What’s best is to take a step back, consider the reaction rather than wading in yelling ‘BAN IT!’ etc which we’ve already seen multiple times. The game may turn out to be outright rubbish, but by giving it all this attention we’re kind of promoting it beyond belief.
Hatred very well *can* be compared to cinema in terms of its content, granted, one is passive one is interactive, but if it still tells a story and has a linear narrative of some variety then it very well can. I know there’s the inherent part of us that says ‘Dont compare games to movies and vice versa!’ but there are indeed parts of them that can be. Story, content etc. However like I said earlier, if we want to fly the flag that games are no different to movies in that they cannot make us do things, influence us in any undue way, then we have to accept that games as a form of media, are not above comparison.
There’s a Uwe Boll movie that’s widely praised? What is this world coming to?
There’s a few. Rampage and Darfur aren’t too bad a watch. Rampage 2 sucks balls though. Avoid it.
Hmm, I’ll have to check them out then.
Don’t go expecting oscar level material now lmao. They’re solid 6/10 movies whereas his other stuff is around 1 or 2 (generous!)
Oh yeah, I know to go in with extremely low expectations when it comes to Uwe Boll. 😛
I found Tunnel Rats really enjoyable too. Definitely worth a watch.
You know, I once interviewed Uwe, just after Postal but prior to Tunnelrats (it was filming I believe either at the time or soon after). Great guy, lots of controversy going on at the time with Aintitcoolnews and their shonky review practices. But for all the flack he cops, when he’s not converting games to bad movies, he pumps out some decent enough flicks. (Can supply url to youtube recording I put up if needed.)
For sure, I’d love to see it!
I think I did that like, 7 or 8 years ago now or something!? Damn it was a while back. Had one of my mates co-host with me. This was back when I did a bunch of interviews with actors, directors, producers etc for websites and my own site I don’t have any more unfortunately. Goes for over an hour lol. But the dude, seriously, was tops. Spoke to him like 3 times all up? Each time he remembered me and was a pleasure.
Yeah, I like Uwe Boll. I genuinely liked BloodRayne. Hated House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and mostly In The Name of the King, but everything else is ok with me. There are FAR worse movies out there than the stuff Uwe makes.
Cheers for the link dude, watching now 🙂
EDIT: OMG – his take on Tara Reid has me in stitches. Cutting lines for her, putting glasses on her and her hair back, haha – he’s awesome 🙂
Totally different. They are movies. This is a game that a child can play. Strike that, WILL PLAY
Don’t trot that bag of shit out. You’re better than that.
http://i.qkme.me/3rnvk6.jpg
Right and no children have ever watched inappropriate movies
The downvoting I guess is from people not understanding this is clearly sarcasm.
That sarcasm thing, it’s usually best to actually either imply it or tag it. Otherwise it comes across as not being sarcasm. You see it as sarcasm, others don’t. That in itself shows it’s not succesful in pointing that out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
It’s hard to read sarcasm over the internet.
Having worked in games retail I can guarantee you that parents WOULD still buy this for kids who are way too young. No matter the rating it has.
But to me the game just looks like a very “meh” isometric shooter with visceral cut scenes of the “execution” type moves. I doubt I’d play it anyway from what I’ve seen.
It does seem to pretty much be on par with the original Postal game and could be fun to play. It doesn’t shock me, but I do think it’s exploitatively violent and I really have no interest in it.
Absolutely it’s exploitative. I don’t think that could possibly be argued succesfully. Wouldn’t dream of it. As the article points out, many other games out there allow you to commit these very actions, this game just makes it a bit more… confronting.
The amount of shit this game is getting is almost shocking in itself.
It’s like there’s some active campaign against it, given all the negative buzz about it.
Mind you, I haven’t watched the trailer, but I suspect that even when I do, I’ll still say that all the buzz is a bit much.
There’s differing context between this game and yours and others examples.
Compared to games such as GTA and what not, the context each is set in is completely different, and entirely relevant.
You don’t play as a character who is set out to kill everyone he comes across in GTA (despite most people playing like that).
It’s not a game about killing civilians.
There’s a story, and motives, and any unnecessary killing is up to the player (i.e. I do my best to avoid killing civilians in GTA).
This game has you go out and kill civilians as its purpose. The soul aim of the game is to kill innocent people.
That’s the problem here.
Even with your movie examples, there tends to be more context behind them. The first Saw was actually pretty great, and the second was pretty good too. They started becoming “torture porn” at around Saw 3 when it lost its story, and the context behind it, which is when people started to like them less.
While each of the commonly mentioned examples are violent games / movies, most have a story behind why they are violent in nature.
It’s not necessarily needless violence.
You’ll also notice that generally with your examples, the worse the story behind it / less context for violence, the less people like the amount of violence and the movie / game in general (see Saw, Hostel and Postal).
Thus is just unnecessary violence fir the sake of it.
There’s going against the grain, which is what the developers said they were aiming for, then there is going too far.
This is, quite clearly, too far.
Incidentally, SAW became torture porn at SAW 2, with incidents like the fire chamber and the needle pit. So who is the person who decides what ‘too far’ is exactly? I mean who holds the moral leash here? The church? The government? Our dear mothers?
Just don’t play the game, it’s that simple. And yes, it really IS that simple.
Postal 1 and 2 didn’t end the world, hell, part 3 got released and noone even noticed. The SAW series didn’t ruin the morals of the world. The Exorcist didn’t bring down the catholic church and my god man, this is blowing out of all proportion into something that’s taking on a life of it’s own. Fact is, and it is a fact, a stone cold fact, the game is coming, it’s going to make nary a mark on this world. Columbine RPG didn’t ruin the fabric of society, JFK reloaded was a big bucket of meh and VTech massacre if you ask people now has them scratching their heads going ‘Huh?’
Modern Warfare 2 didn’t send our kids into airports gunning down mass amounts of civilians (by the way the EXACT same thing you do here, just with a bit more aplomb I’m guessing) and the world…
It’s not going to end.
AND HUGH JACKMAN.
No one is saying that the game is going to have an impact.
No one is saying that the game is going to inspire people.
Everybody knows it isn’t going to.
What people are saying is that the idea and concept of the game is, quite frankly, disgusting.
Don’t you think that that is a good reaction that people identify that needlessly killing civilians is wrong?
I think it’s better to identify that even though it is just a game, the general concept of the game is quite wrong.
It isn’t something you should make a game out of, in my mind (and many others, apparently).
Call it a difference in morals.
I would feel morally wrong playing this game.
I’m more interested in what kind of people would find playing a game where your aim is to kill as many innocent people as possible fun anyway.
Also, Saw totally became torture porn at 3! 😛
2 had a story! Not what one would call a great story, but it was deeper than people give it credit for.
Yes it was more violent than 1, but I feel the story was there to warrant it.
Not as good as 1 though.
3 is where the violence got too violent, and the story got too vague (for my tastes at least).
I’m more interested in what kind of people would find playing a game where your aim is to kill as many innocent people as possible fun anyway.
Asides that being a rather reprehensible assumption and comment in its own right, I don’t know, how many people using that rather, defunct logic, enjoyed playing Modern Warfares NO RUSSIAN mission?
I guess the main difference between us, is I don’t make assumptions about peoples moral character based on a single game? That’s pretty arrogant and short sighted. A single game defines a persons moral character? No it doesn’t. It means you’re merely seeking to see if the person fits *your* definition of morality, that’s all. But your definition of morality is going to be slightly, or majorly, different to others. Who knows, you may do something that disturbs others.
As far as it being disgusting, I personally don’t find it disgusting for the simple fact I don’t really intend to give it the level of attention it deserves to warrant it. It’s not a morality thing, it’s a common sense thing for me. My common sense tells me ‘If I get offended by it I won’t play it, that simple.’ But, in this day and age it’s almost like people need something to be offended and morally outraged by or their day isn’t complete.
Incidentally, sorry but SAW was definitely torture porn at 2. You might want to watch it again. 3 had more extreme kills, but part 2 involved people being *tortured* which is the very basis of *torture porn*.
Dude, settle down, seriously.
Stop acting like I’m attacking you.
I’m not questing peoples morals, I’m just literally interested in who would find it fun.
That’s not judging peoples morals.
There’s no, “Who would find this, fun?!”
I literally meant, “I wonder who would find this fun”, as a general question.
I’d rather know why people find it fun so I can better understand.
Did I ever once say that I care if people play this game?
Did I ever once say that I care if people like this game?
No. Because I don’t. So stop putting words into my mouth.
Stating that I would feel morally wrong while others may not isn’t judging people based on their morals either, it literally just means that I would not feel comfortable playing it.
Do me a favour and point out in that sentence where I said I care what other people do.
And point out where I said I’m morally outraged.
Again, I think you’re assuming that I care about this far more than I do.
Stop acting like I’m attacking when I’m not. You’re coming off as a bit of an arse (which I know you’re not usually)
Oh, and Saw 2 didn’t so much have torture, it more had deathtraps / trials (fine line, I know).
Like I said though in my second post, I feel the story was there to warrant the violence, though it wasn’t nearly as violent as any after it (I couldn’t watch all of 3, and didn’t watch any after it).
I guess that’s a personal thing though.
Let’s just agree Saw 5 was a fucking mess and call it a day 😉 lol
Am I the only one looking forward to this game?
Yes.
I’m down! its a game. play it or don’t play. Bunch of damn babies everyone just jumps at the chance to be offended by something.
^This guy gets it.
I’m certainly keen to try it, at least. I’m pretty sure the shock value will wear of after a while, and it’ll prove to be a good alternative to Hotline Miami or something.
It really depends on how it turns out, sometimes these games are purely made to make a quick buck off shock value and the actual game is a complete piece of crap.
Look at postal!
I’m so-so about it right now. The gameplay and gore don’t look too fantastic from what I’ve seen so far. However the grayscale and red colour scheme looks fantastic and if they can convey the true psychopathic nature of your main character with some decent story and voice acting (as shown in the trailer) I could see this being fantastic as a misunderstood art house game. Might be pushing it a bit there though….
I love the immaturiaty this game has brought out in people. I guarantee those of you crying “M-MUH VIOLENCE” are the same people who want video games to be considered art.
You want video games to be considered art? You’ve got to take what you personally don’t like along side what you do like.
I for one, eagerly anticpate this game’s release because I’m not pro-censorship, and understand that video games aren’t real life.
How many whiny reviewers are going to give it a bad review because of the concept?
It’s not about reviewers being whiney, it’s a crap concept. Game play may be good but unless I’m missing some key point here the story and tone is attention seeking and lazy.
I think we will see quite a few bad reviews just because of the concept. I think Polygon gave a Tropico 5 a negative review because the reviewer played the game like a dictator and didn’t like it.
This is all so hilarious, all I seem to see everywhere are the most hypocritical arguments that basically boil down to ‘sure, in gta I go on civilian killing sprees, but in this game it’s the actual goal so I’m so offended!’
People love getting up on that high horse.
It’s fair enough that Epic don’t want anything to do with this game. Whether it ends up as a game glorifying slaughter or extremely provocative art, they’re not invested enough to ride it out.
Kudos to both Epic and the Devs for what seems to be a really well handled situation though. Epic asks nicely, devs agree to do so. No childish tantrums on either side.
Exactly. As controversial as this game might be it really does nothing more than what R18 films haven’t done already. The knee jerk reaction here is from the elderly forgetting that games aren’t only for children, the Nintendo generation have already started procreating for God sake.
Looks like a good game, might give it a go.