Home / Software & Gaming / Epic Games distances itself from UE4 game about mass murder

Epic Games distances itself from UE4 game about mass murder

There's often a big problem for games developers when it comes to making a game, especially when it comes to shooters: how do they make it ok to kill hundreds and hundreds of enemies without you being the bad guy? Most of the time the easiest way is to make them zombies, or orcs or devils or evil orc zombie devils, but occasionally they're not. In a new game announced today called Hatred, from developer Destructive Creations, you mow down screaming, fleeing civilians in shooting sprees, for no apparent reason at all.

hatred
The only real difference with this game is he isn't a grizzled, shaved headed space marine. 

“Hatred is an isometric shooter with disturbing atmosphere of mass killing, where player take on the role of a cold blood antagonist, who is full of hatred for humanity,” reads the official website. “It’s a horror, but here YOU are the villain.”

The game features open world levels, with a sandbox structure of slaughter, shootouts with the cops and some brutal synch kill animations complete with pleading victims. Have a gander at the trailer below if you're interested to see what it all looks like: [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrX7G-1xPLs']

In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, especially for a company like Epic which has built itself on the wholesale slaughter of digital characters, the company behind the game's Unreal Engine has distanced itself from the developers, stating that it doesn't want its logo associated with the trailer.

“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,” the company said.

For the developer's part, he just thought that including the logo in your video was mandatory when using UE4.

The game's trailer and premise have already caused much division, with some defending the developer's stance on anti-political-correctness in gaming, while others have suggested like many politicians have done about other games over the years, that it's just a murder simulator.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: It's worth remembering that this is far from the first time games have had you slaughtering innocents, they just tend to wrap it up in a way that makes it technically ok. The Bioshock series has you mowing down mentally ill drug addicts, Call of Duty has you wipe out an airport of civilians to fit in with your new Russian friends, GTA has you mowing down hundreds of police – to suggest this game is that much worse than anything that's come before is hypocritical.

You could even go so far as to say that a game like this is a great criticism of gaming and how it wraps up murder in fun new ways with each outing. [Cheers VG247]

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18 comments

  1. video games are not responsible for peoples actions. People who play murder simulators won’t go and kill loads of people unless they have serious issues that were definitely present before they played the game. Hell, I play Fifa football games does that mean I’m going to be the next Messi or Ronaldo ? not at all likely.

  2. you are wrong, normalfag. This will make people want kill people. Just as sex fantasies become a reality earlier or later..

  3. Martin Christopher Tan

    Yeah, but sometimes violent videogame genres can hit too close to home for some people. Violent shooters like Doom, Unreal, and Painkiller are alright because their settings are purely fictional. COD games get a pass because, well, let’s just quote the Joker on this entire matter:

    “You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to
    plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press
    that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will
    be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan”. But
    when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses
    their minds!”

  4. Alexander Possessed

    The game would’ve looked soo much more interesting to me if it were first or third person, not isometric…still, I’d play it 😀

  5. James Stephen Edge

    I’ve murdered millions of people over the years via Carmageddon, GTA, etc. And I have never killed anyone in real life (most likely because I had an outlet for my killing) games don’t kill people, politicians do.

  6. Did you steal this story from Polygon or did you both steal it from somewhere else? 😛

    I think its just a hype story, they aren’t distancing themselves at all, they just said they dont try to control what types of games people make.

    As for the logo thing, I think everyone knows by now that copyright law is a messy thing. From looking briefly on the UE4 website it seems that “The use of Unreal Engine logos and trademarks is available to Unreal Engine developers and partners who have signed a trademark license.”

    https://www.unrealengine.com/branding-guidelines-and-trademark-usage

    So… I’m guessing the developer has just subscribed to the engine and hasn’t signed the trademark license.

  7. I commend the devs for saying ‘fuck it’ and making a game they want to make.
    I personally wont be buying it as it’s not my cuppa tea, I’d get an hour out of it before going meh
    I can see why a lot of people would be offended by it but if you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

  8. Robert Tenty Ashford

    I wasn’t going to comment on this but after seeing Asdfsadf’s I feel I have to say something to make you further consider what you have said. As someone who has a background of study in homicide, sexual violence and the psychology of media I have to say I think your argument has little ground Asdfsadf. There is little evidence to suggest that these media types will have too strong a corrupting influence over the thinking of people and sway them toward commiting of acts of violence. I will echo Grumpytroopers comment saying that underlying criminogenic factors are far more likely to be the cause of such actions, further study should be done around it but for now every study attempting to condemn videogames for this has fallen short and not been able to prove any kind of causality. I do hpwever think you have a point Martin Christopher Tan, any kind of disturbing
    issue can hit too close to home. And if a friend of mine had been gunned down in an airport, I would have been devastated to play that bit of COD. (There was an option to skip it, lthougg they don’t explain airport etc, would have been a bit of a bogged down intro message I suppose).

    Sex fantasies do not always become a reality sooner or later, hence the hard work of prevention systems and the people within them to help prevent serious offences. Games have the beauty of being one of the few types of media that are more optional than others, and thank god for that. Although if an advert for this game appears on a billboard, I am completely wrong.

  9. Lol, if someone were to blame a game engine they might as well blame Apple or Microsoft for being able to run the programs that developed the engine and the games :/ And even the graphics tablets and mice that people use to fuss around in them in different ways. Oh, and don’t forget the monitors they use to see what they are doing and the electric company that allows them to work on a workstation …. nothing different about them, really.

  10. Guilherme Marques

    I see these kind of games as pointless. Never liked games with no excuse for the violence, like carmageddon, or postal.

    The other games you may be killing people to prove a point or something or to defend yourself. I’ve been playing tomb raider for a while and Lara Croft has never killed that many humans in past games. Usually she fought against wolves ou bears. But the situation she is in the game has pushed her to a limit of fighting for her survival.

    Mortal kombat has another excuse for the violence, you are in a deadly fight to defend earth realm, and you can finish your opponents to consagrate your victory.

    I believe the problem with this game is that you are going to kill many people because you hate them, you hate the world. I may not like this excuse and for that i won’t be playing this game. I think if epic doesn’t want it image to be connected to this title is just fair enough.

  11. Good to know you’re cool with killing animals after you’ve invaded and destroyed their natural habitat. The point of a game is to do stuff that you don’t do – all media; books, movies, drama, etc, do this. That’s a major function of them. They serve to flip social conventions, invert normal behaviour, reverse a single or multiple aspects of sociality and explore the consequences in a safe environment. They always have and always will, and frankly, things like drama have confronted things in a much more disturbing way than games do – Medea, for instance, is far more disturbing than any game I’ve ever played. It still astonishes me that newspapers can condemn GTA on one page and praise Medea on the next.

  12. you are a retard please don’t breed.

  13. “Any kind of disturbing issue can hit too close to home.”

    This is what troubles me the most, specially for people in NA, it hits a bit TOO close, and while it may gross out or cause censorship even, it may very well help bring out this issue to light but….for a positive, or negative reaction? The same way a lot of news programmes have screwed up the coverage of these situations, this may very well be a pretty bad example on how to tackle a sensitive topic.

  14. I personally think it’s completely stupid, the argument that video games cause violence will never end, and as long as those types of people exist in the world, then there will never be a shooting game that’s realistic and fun. I’ve played a good few hours on surgeon simulator, and not once have I thought ”Look at that guy over there, I’d so strap him to a table, name him bob, and slowly smash open his ribcage with a hammer, so that I can replace his liver with a cup”. Now, I may not be the most knowledgeable person in this world, but I’m pretty sure that if a person see’s a violent shooting game and thinks to themselves ”I know, I’m going to go to a supermarket and kill 17 elderly people”, then they’ll probably look at the news and think ”Oh look, terrorists have hijacked a boat full of people, I think I should also hijack a boat full of people too because I’m a simple minded delinquent”

  15. Michael Kapuscinski

    I respect the developers right to create the product that they want for whatever reason’s. I also accept that there may even be redeemable qualities to a game like this. Social commentary, venting, maybe therapy. I’m not a psychologist. But for my part this doesn’t interest me personally. And that’s okay.

  16. I really hope this game is banned, there’s a line of decency and this doesn’t just cross it (like GTA or Manhunt), it is in a separate universe from it. It isn’t like there’s a cohesive story, it is just murder porn.

  17. Daily mail on Speed Dial lol..

  18. seemed like a troll to me -.-