BruceVC

So you boys are telling me that if there was a hidden camera in your house that was filming surreptitiously everything you did, including intimacy with a partner, you would consider this the same type of invasion of your privacy as someone reading your emails ? Hold on, what? You just added a bunch of qualifiers that weren't in your original post. You just took your relatively simple example and made it a lot more complicated. That's not how it works. But I expect you to use your common sense when it comes to a probable outcome or what someone is alluding to If there is a hidden camera in your house that I mentioned is also invading your privacy surly the corollary of this is the camera is in your room and then obviously it would be filming everything you normally do in your room ? So how did I make the scenario more complicated? Where did you imagine the camera would be ?

Funny enough I played Mafia 2 and I really enjoyed it, I liked there interpretation of the game world and the fact it was an open world

I refuse to believe that you don't see the obvious issue with any game that targeted a specific demographic. So for example a game where you only killed African Americans? This would not be acceptable to many people and understandably so

Well I wouldn't like to play any game where you only target and kill a certain demographic, what would be the purpose of this? Why select only gamers...this is a form of discrimination and not something I would condone

He sounds like a fanatic who is exaggerating the intentions of SJW and people who share there concerns. Who is he again? Please explain what part of his post sounded "fanatical." No problem, the word fanatic can have various definitions. In the context of this debate I consider that person a fanatic because he is obviously embellishing and exaggerating the influence that SJW have. He uses words like "tyrant " and how the " left is a danger to the future of the country ". Its scare tactics and I encourage people to ignore this subjective view of the SJ agenda There are real issues in the world we should be concerned with, SJ ideas are not something that will threaten your lifestyle in respects to gaming. Unless you can give me just 3 examples of where SJW initiatives have fundamentally changed your gaming experience I would just ignore his post as propaganda

Is this a real post that you are being serious about ? So you are interested in exploring the darker side of humanity, not sure why you want to do this but its your choice, would you support a Hatred game where you get to kill only gay people or maybe black people? I have a real issue with people being able to be live out there bigoted murder fantasies in a game, I think it is abhorrent and I will very surprised if Valve would be associated with this type of game

He sounds like a fanatic who is exaggerating the intentions of SJW and people who share there concerns. Who is he again?

You see Volo I'm not like some of you guys who wanted to turn this whole furore into a clear example of censorship, despite the fact it wasn't I respect Valves decision to Greenlight this game or not I would prefer it wasn't distributed on Steam but I am not going to think less of Steam if they decide to go this route. Not everything is a conspiracy theory that means SJW are trying to influence our lives Valve is an independent company and they are entitled to support or not support any game they want

No there was no intention to hurt Russia in anyway until it annexed Crimea. So this isn't personal. But even the word " hurt " is a bit exaggerated. The West has a simple objective, to get Russia to pull out of Ukraine. And sanctions is the adopted and correct strategy. Russia's strategy on deciding what countries should be part of its greater empire has been going on for a while and the West has basically ignored there previous aggression, like in Georgia and Abkhazia and South Ossetia Russia has been using the same approach for a while, its considers certain ex-USSR countries Russian. The citizens of those states even consider themselves Russian but what Russia has now been ignoring is that those states and areas are part of sovereign countries and the governments of those countries don't want to be part of Russia. You cannot redesign a countries borders because it suits your plans of Russian hegemony Personally I believe the West tried to overlook Russia actions, like in Georgia, but Putin went too far in Ukraine. Russia can go for years suffering under this economic maelstrom but the right thing to do is just pull out from Ukraine and stop supporting the separatists. Crimea is probably more complicated as that has been annexed No one wants sanctions against Russia, they also hurt certain Western countries. But this punitive step is necessary to get Russia to rethink its political views in respects to a place like Ukraine

Yes that is an accurate post, also you have voted Republican in the past as you mentioned so I thought you were more Republican than Democrat

Volo we discussed this before, its not a good idea you buy this game for a number of reasons. Lets not bring this up again?

I'm disappointed in Steam to bowing to some public pressure and putting Hatred back But at least I can also vote " No "

Volo, Longknife is right. We are derailing this discussion about something that isn't that relevant to the overall point Lets move on, I won't be discussing your niece anymore

Well he's mentioned that he has frequented hookers before. Not sure if underage though. That's true I did say that and no the girls are all overage and work in strip clubs

You seem almost offended by my suggestion your niece may work in the sex industry. I'm not sure why, it was some of you guys who said being a hooker is a normal job like a hotdog salesman. It was some of you guys who said hookers don't need special consideration when it comes to there job and lifestyle...so I would think you should see my questions as asking if your niece has a normal job...that's the sex industry according to you? Now me I see it differently, I think the sex industry for many girls is degrading and exploitive. I think many of the ladies are victims of terrible circumstances and they do it for survival. And I wouldn't want to add to that misery in anyway

Perhaps I've missed something, but I'm under the impression that Hatred isn't finished, hasn't been released (or else why would it be up for voting on Greenlight?) so how would you know that Hatred is none of those things you list? BTW, Lolita was turned down by 6 major US publishers for content concerns before Nobokov turned to France where the publisher ended up being one that mostly did pornographic novels. France banned it a year after its publication after the UK customs started seizing shipments into the country of the book. It took 4 years for US and 5 for UK publication. The UK publication ended the political career of the publisher. So pardon me if I fail to see how "merit" somehow makes something censor/ban proof... You far too clever to make such a fatuous argument that Hatred may reach the intellectual and emotional heights of Lolita, its just a violent FPS....that's it It would be silly to even entertain this notion, so let not waste each others by discussing this impossible outcome

Fair enough, it probably may appear to undermine the purpose of Greenlight. But there should be terms and conditions that allows Valve that under certain circumstances to remove games. And more importantly its not like they do this often

You keep asking me about your niece and you still haven't explained why my suggestion to remove hookers from the game is somehow responsible for her not playing it? Unless I'm missing something...like does your niece work in the sex industry and now there is some kind of reason hookers effects her emotionally ?

Actually the truth is " the customer is king, but not always right "

Well I'm glad you recognise Valve has this right. Because you guys espouse freedom of expression and freedom of speech but you don't seem to accept Valves right to not distribute a game? Unfortunately this is an example where the customer isn't always right, Valve received complaints and they made a perfectly understandable decision to ban this game. Lets not read too much into it, its not like Valves core business will be impacted so neither will our Steam gaming experience

No. We can decide for our selves what's appropriate for us and what's not. We absolutely should not support this. Steam is too big and too important to let the moral police decide what choices an individual is permitted to have. Explain to me why is it necessary that your opinion gets to decide for other people? Look the reality is are you the best person to decide what games Steam distributes? You guys have no filters and I doubt anything would be considered inappropriate Also when it comes to real censorship you right it can be very subjective and hard to manage. But this is not this type of example, you just need to accept that Valve does know more about these things than most of us and they made the right decision

Would you agree that the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, Lolita, Sweeney Todd, The Color Purple, Heart of Darkness, and Otto Dix's "The Trench Warfare" are also controversial? (Fun fact: the last of that list was banned by the Nazis for being too gruesome) Not trying to compare this game to famous works of art, but I am trying to say that art is about pushing limits. Not purposefully pushing limits and attempting to be edgy, per se, but art knows no boundaries. Any comedian would tell you a comedian's job is to cross the line. Are jokes about the holocaust off limits? No, actually, no they're not. The ends justifies the means with comedy, so if you can make em laugh with a joke like that, by all means, but if it falls flat and offends, you f***ed up. It's simply a notoriously troublesome subject matter where the odds of pulling that laugh off are clearly stacked against you, but does it happen? Kindly look up any Epic Rap Battle video with Hitler vs. Darth Vader, I think you'll find the videos are outrageously popular despite Hitler very clearly cracking jokes about the holocaust. But comedy is not an exception here. No, comedy is just one art form, and it's not that there are no limits exclusively to comedy, it's that there are no limits to art in it's entirety. You can make art about ANYTHING. Just today, I came across that Youtube video of Egoraptor doing a "Did you Know Gaming" on No More Heroes. The video sparked GamerGate discussion because apparently EgoRaptor is anti-GG and the video provided trigger warnings for the game. And you know what...? I caught myself thinking about how No More Heroes (both 1 & 2) was a game(s) that absolutely surprised me by making some profound statements within it's brief little story. It comes across as some gruesomely violent hack-n-slash that's trying to be edgy, but no, it actually executes it's look very very well. That was a game I WOULD consider art, and you know what that game has? -Depictions of violence against women. Beautiful women, ugly women, young women, old women. -Depictions of violence against the disabled. One of those beautiful women is missing a leg. -Stories of incest and rape -Discussion of violence against women as a real-life hot-button topic. -High levels of violence in general, sometimes to very gruesome degrees. -A degree of sexualization of some of the female opponents Travis (the protagonist) must face and kill Don't believe me? My point is that if you censor art, you potentially miss out on the gems. Yes, games like Call of Duty are absolute ****. They're contrived storylines of glory in a setting where....****ing South America wages war against the USA by hijacking our high-tech orbital missles...those clearly are not art and those clearly aren't winning any awards. But we need those to exist. We need to allow for the bad so that the good can exist also. The moment we start trying to pick and choose what can and can't be, all we are doing is limiting art based on our own subjective beliefs. All we are doing is holding art back and stagnating it. No, you will not like or understand every song or every book you read, but that doesn't mean they deserve to be burned. It means you just need to leave those books to the people who enjoy them and go find something else you yourself would enjoy reading instead, and then read it. It's the same exact thing with video games. All those examples you guys mentioned, like Lolita, are considered great works of literature. They are multi-levelled and nuanced and discuss real societal themes and issues. They encourage debate and it would be a travesty to see them banned Hatred is none of this, its just game with a deeply flawed design where the developers want to be controversial and appeal to people like you guys who will buy there product " in the interest of freedom of expression". Its a con..don't fall for it. Also we aren't even talking about censorship here, Valve has every right to not distribute any game for whatever reason. They not saying you shouldn't play Hatred or it should be censored by others. This is there business decision and its something we should accept as its not like Valve doesn't distribute many games, this is really the first time I have heard about it ?

Yes that is correct, I have mentioned this several times but the Russian economy's free fall is due to the falling oil price and sanctions You don't always need military intervention to get countries to change there actions and political decisions. Sanctions can and do work, they just work slower There are of course examples where you have no choice but military intervention to prevent mass killings and genocide. Like in Libya, Serbia and the airstrikes against ISIS And the Putin internal propaganda machine has convinced most Russians that the interference in Ukraine is legitimate and in fact is basically a Russian right to protect its borders from the encroaching EU and Western ideology Its a massive exaggeration of course but Putins popularity is still very high But yes the state of the Russian economy is a direct cause of Putins policies so I don't have too much sympathy

Its a public holiday today in South Africa, Day of Reconciliation We are going for awesome spare ribs for lunch...and trust me they are utterly delicious

They want to remove the problematic games. Of course, the fact that Steam has such huge market percentage is more problematic than a distributor not selling a game, but that's been covered on other places to death. We should be supporting Steam in this decision, its the right thing to do. Why should Steam want to be associated with a game like Hatred? They can find another distribution mechanism for there game. They want to make a game with such controversial themes, this is the price you pay Well done Steam