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[Virtz]

I too will be supporting Nazis in order to further the cause of free speech

Yeah, Polish "Nazis". Lord almighty.

At least the quasi-pornographers aren't fascists.  Well, mostly.

No, just Holocaust deniers.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Let the selective censorship justification attempts continue! I will still buy this to support freedom of art. :]

[birdy51]

The word art is thrown round callously these days. The words power and image has suffered since it's a catch all for everything in the universe that has any meaning, to anyone. It is made devoid of meaning by how often it is slammed into places and stretched until our idea of art simultaneously covers the whole human spectrum of thought and nothing at all.

Rant over, another one begins.


I personally hesitate to call this art. Note the word personally. I don't expect my opinion to be shared, and I don't want to get caught up arguing about my opinion since I'm never going to act on my opinion beyond this idle statement and possibly a few small ones after words. I would prefer to call this game an act of artistic expression, but calling it actual art seems overkill (Hah! Pun). Mind numbing violence begrudgingly has a place in this society, and I would be a hypocrite to say that I didn't and still wouldn't go on random sprees of violence on games like Grand Theft Auto if I'm playing it with my buddies. So I'm not going to argue that it shouldn't exist, since it reveals a certain quirk about the human psyche. But art just seems sort of... Eh.

You can call it art, but then are you really doing good by the things that actually move you?

[pisskop]

Personally, I too think the word 'art' is overused and largely worthless.  but for more reasons than its application to everything.  Art suffers from overapplication; mundane posters or comics in the newdspaper are considered art the same way a commissioned painting is.  More upsetting is art designed to be agonistic or overtly strawmanny political.  Art like that is worse than abstract art  the kind placed in a plaza that the average Joe doesnt understand or even attempt to any longer.

with the rise of information technology, everyone can make 'art' and have an opion . . . law of averagrs says most will be substandard

[TamerVirus]

Does everything need to be art? I just want to have fun.

Inb4 fun is a buzzword

[Graknorke]

Art never had a definition as specific as you're making out it did.

[Rez]

The traditional definition is 'information I agree with'.

[SealyStar]

The traditional definition is 'information I agree with'.

The traditional definition is "media that I find meaningful and/or aesthetically pleasing."

The more modern definition is "media that is edgy and contrarian in a way that suits my personal beliefs."

Props to Valve for putting it up, I guess? It looks like a meh game, but as has been said there's a lot worse on Greenlight and the only reason for singling this out would be because someone cried feels.

[birdy51]

Art never had a definition as specific as you're making out it did.

You're absolutely right.

Art has always been defined by it's aesthetic, which is in turn defined by the people of the age. As time changes, the idea of what art is changes as well. Therefore, it has a fluid definition.

Let me give an example, the Rite of Spring. Igor Stravinsky very experimental with this particular ballet. Unlike most ballets, it had no even rhythm. It's rhythm is constantly interrupted is full of random bits of disjunction, hopping randomly here and there and back again in a pulsing, pounding way. Not anything close to what people would consider ballet. When it premiered in Paris, the ballet goers were furious that it existed. They saw it as a mockery of their ballet culture. One newspaper described the performance as "a laborious and puerile barbarity". What was barbaric was the crowd, which eventually grew so loud that the orchestra couldn't be heard, and the dancers could only barely hear their dance instructor in the wings who was desperately trying to give them the proper tempo. The audience eventually started to bombard the orchestra anything near them that they could throw. They were able to finish the Rite of Spring that night, and nights afterwards with reasonable success. The ending was actually received well enough. Very few in their right mind however would have called it art, save for those who were involved in it's production and were enamored of the chaos.

Now? Hell yes it's art. It's flipped the standard convention of music and turned it on it's head. Melody? Didn't need it all that much. Rhythm? Let's make it chaotic. That way it sounds like complete madness is taking place on stage. Igor Stravinsky pulled it off and the end effect was brilliant.

In the case of Hatred... I'm with the Parisians. You can call it art but for now I want to willfully distance away from it. I suppose if I had to give any sort of logic to that reasoning, it's just not the culture that I want to adopt into my aesthetic.

[Zangi]

Gaben seems to be rationally consistent with how Steam 'should' be run. 
Steam is purely a content provider/distributor.  Not a gatekeeper that decides what can and cannot be put on Steam based on whatever standards that will have to be updated with the times every so often...  That is an additional legal AND public relation headache/expense that Steam does not need to wade into.

So yea, removing Hatred cause of distasteful PR and/or public outcry against the game's violent content does not coincide with a content provider/distributor that does not police its products based on its violent content. 
Customers vote with their wallet. ... Well, there is also that fancy new thumbs-up/thumbs-down feature too.

[coolio678]

Customers vote with their wallet. ... Well, there is also that fancy new thumbs-up/thumbs-down feature too.

Don't forget that customers also vote with ascii spam when something is "super ultra mega epic valve add this and give me one too." Maybe that's just the workshop, though.

[GobbieMarauder]

I'd hardly call Valve removing the game from their service "suppression of free speech." Valve has rights too, after all, and the freedom of speech is your right to express any idea you want, but not anywhere you want, any time you want, and in any way you want. They can make Nathan Explosion Goes To Columbine if they want, but Valve isn't obligated to give them a soapbox.

Also, while it's certainly "expression," the developers have said they don't have a point they're trying to make, which I think is necessary for it to be considered art. Otherwise we go down a road that eventually leads to "anything a human does is art, ergo art deserves no special treatment and the entire discussion is moot."

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The point with Valve is that if they don't even enter into the business of judging the games on their digital delivery service, then they are a neutral service provider. That's the value of not removing Hatred from Steam. It's consistent with their policies thus far, and makes Greenlight more significant as well, since it makes the only community quality arbiters instead of Valve.

[NobodyPro]

you will clear the American soil off humans with cold blood.

Reptilian Infiltrator Health Spa Simulator 2015. Only Not Important can cleanse lifes of human skoom.

I too will be supporting Nazis in order to further the cause of free speech

Could you seriously elaborate on this. The Żołnieże Wyklęci were not Nazis.

[NobodyPro]

*mobile posting is hard*