I'm cool with certain content being socially unacceptable, but I'm not cool with the government censoring shit.  If Steam doesn't want to distribute a game due to questionable content that's fine.  But when Australia bans the sale of a game, that's different.  

I was disgusted by that "Hatred" game that has been making the rounds.  But I certainly don't think the government should step in.  

Nice write up man.  

Thanks!

 May I ask why everyone is so disgusted with Hatred though?

I think because it's just a pure murder simulator for people to get their rocks off killing innocent people and feeling powerful.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I've killed many an innocent scientist in Goldeneye, and I've played the No Russian level in COD multiple times, and enjoyed it.  But Hatred seems so much more cynical, and even unaware of it's own filth.  GTA at least knows it's bad.  

So? I don't get why that's a problem when games like this have existed in the past. It's tacky, sure, but not the worst thing ever.

I'm not saying it's the worst thing ever.  I'm just saying I think it's lame.  

like, for me, personally, I am turned off by nihilism.  And this stinks of an extreme sort of nihilism.  So that's why I am personally opposed to it.  I think it's intellectually lazy.  

That's true, but this is the exact sort of thing I would have fallen in love with in high school. I don't think it's actually doing any damage and it's dark and "edgy" so it'll have an audience.

I actually think it's awesome that the devs are encouraging people to pirate the game. It's a great tactic to fight censorship. Yeah, it's an odd stance because they aren't going to profit from the sales they could've received, but how else do you stick it to the man in this case?

They can certainly petition the government and ask them to reconsider their rating, but I'm guessing that already happened behind closed doors. When your only option at that point is to self-censor in order to get it released, I have to imagine that some people don't take that decision lightly, or in this case, refuse to do it.

I guess you have a point. The problem is that people who pirate are always looking to justify what they do. "We're sticking it to the man!" is now one of them.

Sure, I can definitely understand your point, but in this particular instance, I think it makes a ton of sense. You can certainly write your representatives and complain about the situation, but something tells me that isn't going to really work out. Plus I was more talking about the stance of the dev in this case. It's a pretty brazen stance that makes a statement, I think, to the powers that be.

Also, people who pirate are always going to do it regardless of anything. For the most part, pirates tend to be high school/college kids without any real income who still want to consume entertainment. I know, I used to be one of them. But as I got older and more specifically, graduated from college and got a job, I started to buy all my entertainment or move to services like Netflix to get what I wanted.

There's no real good excuse for piracy (outside of this type of HM2 situation), regardless of the acrobatics people may want to go through to defend it. I did it and I never had a good excuse (and don't feel at all bad about it). I took stuff because it was easy and because I wanted it. Long term, my pirating days turned me on to all sorts of music and entertainment I never would've been interested in otherwise and now that I have income, I support the bands/companies/etc that I enjoy.

We talked about your topic on the new NWP. Should hopefully be up later today, in honor of the first PAX South.

Sucks to hear that about Hotline Miami 2 and yet another dissapointment for Australian gamers. I think Yahtzee is unamused by this since he's liked the first game.

On the case of Piracy, I think it's good for Australia in that case just to "stick it to the man" and maybe warn the higher authorities that gamers won't tolerate censorship. I don't fully condone piracy, but if it comes to stuff that isn't posible to acces or censorship, I would most likely support it. Besides, with the now stablished fans of the first game, I think it'll do fine in the rest of the world.

That is an interesting situation that Austrailia put the devlopers of the game in. I get what the "Board of Old White People" (I thought this was hilarious) are trying to do yet at the same time it seems that let other media with more graphic images in without any problems. It sounds like they need to figure why they have a double standard. 

As for the piracy portion the developers can do what they want. It is a shame that can't make money off of their product but they want their game out there. It feels like they are undermining what other companies are doing by preventing piracy. 

Yeah. The board http://www.classification.gov.au/About/BoardMembers/Pages/Classification-Board-Members.aspx

 The double standard exists because of interactivity. The board thinks that because of interactivity. In their eyes the activities are more heinous if they're acted out, but the problem in this case is the scene isn't intreractive.

 And yeah, they can do what they want, but it just seems a bit dangerous.