Hatred developer speaks out on Adults Only ESRB rating

Hatred, the game that was removed from Steam then reinstated on Steam, has the video game community split. Simply put, there are those that support the game and there are those that do not.

From what we know Hatred is an isometric shooter where you play as a man with no name and no background information, who hunts down every day civilians and kills them.

Recently, the game was submitted to The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) to receive its official rating. The rating came out to Adults Only (AO). By ESRB standards an AO rating means:

Content suitable only for adults ages 18 and up. May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.

The Developer, Przemysław Szczepaniak (of Destructive Creations), took to the game's forums to reveal and explain why Hatred received an Adults Only rating.

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. 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.

I would prefer to a get a standard M+ rating, because with AO we will have problems to get to consoles in the future, but on the other hand I think you guys (our fans) would be disappointed with it. 😀

I'm curious what PEGI will give us. 🙂

While Szczepaniak may not be convinced about Hatred getting an AO rating, I can see why it would. All you need to do is look at one of the trailers. The game depicts a man finding and killing innocent civilians for no reason other than the fact that he thinks they should die. It is based off of prolonged contextual violence – no sexual content needed.

Oh, and it looks like the dev would like to port Hatred to consoles.

[Reddit]