Destructive Creations is moving forward with the development of Hatred as the game nears the second quarter release. One thing they won’t be doing is going back to remove content in order to have the ESRB’s ‘AO’ (for Adults Only) rating lowered.

I did reach out to Destructive Creations regarding the rating to find out if they would attempt to appeal the AO rating or alter the content to get the ‘M’ for Mature rating instead. According to the team…

“We will not change the game context and content because of AO rating for the PC release for sure. Can’t say too much about consoles yet, we do not know how publishers and other companies will react after PC release. It may occur that game is not as brutal as they assumed it after the trailers and then again weird things can happen.”

I do get the feeling that the game may not be as “extreme” as it might appear. I think it’s more-so the presentation and the context setup by the first trailer that put everyone on edge and caused a lot of controversy.

However, the developers had previously mentioned that they were worried about a potential Xbox One and PS4 release due to the ESRB’s Adults Only label. Neverthless, there’s still hope for Hatred landing on home consoles because the game hasn’t been rated by the Pan European Game Information board, better known as PEGI. According to Destructive Creations…

“We do have to submit the game to PEGI, we didn’t do that yet, because PEGI doesn’t rate unfinished games”

That’s a very good point.

It seems kind of weird that the ESRB rated the game before it even managed to get a release date. Although, it could have been worse… I mean, in the case of Hotline Miami 2 the game was outright denied classification by the Australian ratings board because of an implied sexual assault in the game. However, full-on disembowelment in Mortal Kombat X is a-okay?

I’m not saying I condone any of the content in any of the games, but consistency or cogent explanations from the ratings board would be nice… otherwise it just looks like prudes with the minds of kids pulling favors for interest groups who dislike the content in the game(s).

Hatred is set for release in the second quarter of this year for PC. You can learn more about the game by paying a visit to the official website or checking out the Steam page.