Destructive Creations has announced the Steam Greenlight campaign for their upcoming title Hatred has been cancelled. The developers were told by Valve “that based on what we see on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we’ll be taking it down.”

Valve has traditionally banned games rated Adults Only by the ESRB from their store. The water gets murky since most indie games are not always rated by traditional boards, leaving Valve to make the decision on which indie games to sell on their own. Hatred has yet to actually be reviewed by the ESRB in the US or any of its international equivalents.

Though Destructive Creations likens their game to Manhunt and Postal, which are both currently being sold on Steam, Valve has slapped Hatred with the equivalent of Adults Only rating based on the contents of Hatred’s Steam Greenlight campaign. It is important to note that only the first Manhunt game is available on Steam, as it earned only an Mature rating. The sequel was rated Adults Only and is not sold on Steam. Only a few retailers, such as Amazon, actually sell video games rated Adults Only.

Between the initial surge of popularity from the Steam Greenlight campaign and the further attention the game has received in wake of Valve’s decision, Destructive Creation is planning to keep development on track. Hatred will still be launched in Q2 2015. No word yet on which stores will carry the game in light of this news.

Update: In face of public controversy, Valve has reinstated Hatred’s Steam Greenlight campaign with the following apology from Gabe Newell himself:

Hi, Jaroslaw,
Yesterday I heard that we were taking Hatred down from Greenlight. Since I wasn’t up to speed, I asked around internally to find out why we had done that. It turns out that it wasn’t a good decision, and we’ll be putting Hatred back up. My apologies to you and your team. Steam is about creating tools for content creators and customers.
Good luck with your game
Gabe