This game got quite a lot of discussion at the office yesterday, we discovered that Epic has already asked for their Unreal logo to be removed as they want no affiliation with it. However, they didn’t tell them that they couldn’t make it. To me that seems perfectly fair, because nobody is trying to tell them they can’t make the game. If they we’re told they weren’t allowed to make it, that’s when it would be a problem. If people choose not to be affiliated that’s perfectly fair. I wouldn’t want to be affiliated with ‘Rape Simulator 2014’ for example. (In case that’s actually a thing, I’m not anyway).
I in fact fully believe it will end up for sale on steam (not the consoles, their process is much more strict), IF it passes certification. Strictly speaking that trailer should have gone through certification as well but that’s the YouTube world we live in. If it makes it through that process though, I see no reason for steam not to sell it. They’ll have to put up adequate barriers to the younger generation as usual though.
The media will no doubt portray it as a bad influence, when in reality it has no influence whatsoever. If you can’t distinguish between games and real life it’s you who needs to get your head checked IMO. You get rewarded in lots of other games for killing innocents, like GTA for example. The only difference is that it’s not your objective, but you can choose to make it an objective if you want. I know as a young kid with my friends I’d sometimes find myself in GTA: Vice City’s shopping mall with an AK47 mowing passers-by down to see how long I could stay alive for. People are reacting to this a bit more strongly because of the way it’s portrayed. It’s a game about a serial killer, there are strong films, books and other media out there about the same subject.
I’m pretty sure the game WILL sell on steam like any other, and if somebodies kid goes out and acts stupidly because he played a violent video game (a.k.a, his parents didn’t monitor his activity enough) the fault lies with the parents. I’m sure the same parents wouldn’t let the kid read ‘Diaries of a Serial Killer’ if such a book existed (which it probably does). But of course, video games get bad press anyway so this just adds fuel to the fire. Steam does what it can to protect kids from over-age games by asking for your age. They’d be doing nothing wrong by selling it and if it’ll make them money, why not. If they don’t sell it, it’ll be purely to get the public on their side.
At the end of the day, the games industry is a business, and sh*t like this sells.