Steam vows to never publish Hatred, a mass-murder simulator

Some combination of being an easy target, and giving the murder simulation a slightly more depraved coat of paint than normal.

Even before Valve took this action, the game "Hatred" had become a political football of sorts. In the larger game development culture a set of social views have become fashionable that like to use social pressure to police the content of games.

The existing games do get heat, but I suspect there is a combination of both being grandfathered in, and that they are large properties/genres with publishers that can afford to weather the criticism. Also, it's a much bigger risk to Steam to de-list popular titles from publishers that have or would like to have competing digital distribution platforms.

"This is the time for vengeance, and no life is worth saving, and I will put in the grave as many as I can," the protagonist says in the trailer. "It's time for me to kill, and it's time for me to die. My genocide crusade begins here."

(full article link here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/12/controversial-shooter-...)

Yes, other games -- particularly FPSes -- focus in on killing enemies as a driving mechanic. The difference here is the mechanics vs the focus: in many/most other FPS games, killing enemies is the (still very problematic) mechanic by which a story is told. It's the thing that makes the story into a game.

In "Hatred", the story is "you hate everyone, make them all die." The FPS mechanics here exist in service of the player acting as a genocidal psychopath, with zero condemnation of said genocidal psychopathy -- in fact, it seems to be condoned.