Hatred Gets Adults Only Rating from ESRB

The ESRB has given Hatred, the game in which your character goes around slaughtering people, an Adults Only rating. 

The Adults Only rating is one that is rarely used and is reserved for games that include “prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content, and/or gambling with real currency.” 

“Well, I’m not quite convinced why Hatred got AO rating while it lacks any sexual content, but it’s still some kind of achievement to have the second game in history getting AO rating for violence and harsh language only,” said one of the game’s developers in the official forum.

“Even if this violence isn’t really that bad and this harsh language is not overused. The guy from ESRB (by the way – very nice, polite and cooperative one) told me it’s all about ‘the context’ which people they’re testing gameplay video on will see.”

What is Hatred? 

“Here comes our game, which takes no prisoners and makes no excuses. We say ‘yes, it is a game about killing people’ and the only reason of the antagonist doing that sick stuff is his deep-rooted hatred.” 

In Hatred, the player takes on the role of a villain with a hatred of humanity who begins a mass murder spree.

According to the Destructive Creations, the developers of Hatred, they wanted to create a game that bucks the trend: 

“The question you may ask is: why do they do this? These days, when a lot of games are heading to be polite, colorful, politically correct and trying to be some kind of higher art, rather than just an entertainment – we wanted to create something against trends. Something different, something that could give the player a pure, gaming pleasure.

Here comes our game, which takes no prisoners and makes no excuses. We say ‘yes, it is a game about killing people’ and the only reason of the antagonist doing that sick stuff is his deep-rooted hatred.”

Hatred made headlines when the game was pulled from Steam’s Project Greenlight after reaching seventh place in votes before being put back up in less than a week. 

The violence found in Hatred isn’t the most graphic I’ve seen in a game, though the context of the game, as mentioned above, is probably what is putting people on edge. 

That being said, I opted not to show the trailer for the game in the article, but you can watch it yourselves to form your own opinions (graphic content warning duly given and probably ignored).