Epic Games was quick to distance itself from Hatred, a game revealed this morning from Polish developer Destructive Creations. The game described by its creators as an "isometric shooter with [the] disturbing atmosphere of mass killing," was apparently built using Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and featured the Epic logo in its debut trailer.

Speaking to Polygon, Epic said that it asked the developer to take its logo out of its trailer and other marketing material.

"Hatred," a new game from Polish game developer Destructive Creations, sounds like it was written to give parents nightmares and politicians the kind of fodder they crave to criticize the gratuitous and violent nature of games. While the video released today for the game is ultra violent, the description of the game on its official web site drives home that point even more:

President Barack Obama will announce a nationwide public service campaign that urges young people to do more to help prevent sexual assaults on college campuses across the United States, the New York Times reports. The campaign, "It’s on Us,” will utilize celebrities (to be named later) and partner with game publisher Electronic Arts, according to the report.

Marin County, California District Attorney Ed Berberian's office is co-sponsoring a toy and videogame trade-in program alongside the Center for Domestic Peace and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream in the month of October. The DA's office is co-sponsoring the event because it found great success with a similar buyback program for real guns two years ago. That firearm buy-back program saw people line up to sell an estimated 857 weapons for a total of more than $100,000. The funds for that program came from donations and $40,000 provided by county supervisors.

Here's some Ray Rice backlash that affects your video games. According to The Washington Post, EA Sports will remove the now-former Baltimore Ravens player from the Madden NFL 15 roster - across all platforms the game is available on.

Jennifer Ann’s Group continues to use the medium of video games to promote awareness on the dangers of teen dating violence. Today the nonprofit organization announced the winners of its seventh annual "Life. Love. Game Design Challenge" - as well as the results of its first-ever game jam to create a game that championed its cause of stopping teen violence.

Imagine if Miami Vice's Crockett and Tubbs spent all their time keeping the public safe from those oh-so-dangerous video games.

That's the image I have in my head after reading the Kickstarter pitch for VID Agents, a satirical, 16-episode web series that will "point the finger back at all the people who get cranky about video game violence!"

The Daily Mail has jumped on the story of South Manchester coroner John Pollard (pictured) who noticed that four teenagers who had committed suicide, in a span of at least two years, had played a Call of Duty game.

Over the weekend, a 22-year-old man went on a stabbing, shooting, and vehicular rampage in Isla Vista, California that left seven people dead (including himself from a reportedly self-inflicted gunshot wound) and 13 others injured.

Sparks Nevada police have released a 1,300 page report detailing an exhaustive investigation into the October 2013 middle school shooting in Sparks, Nevada.

"The family owns an XBOX 360 and 69 video games," Sparks, Nevada police chief Brian Allen said at the media event announcing the release of the department's 1300-page report on last year's shooting involving 12-year-old Jose Reyes, who injured two, killed teacher Michael Landsberry, and killed himself using a 9mm handgun at the Sparks Middle School.

A new study conducted by Greg Perreault, a doctoral student at the MU School of Journalism, concludes that, as technology has advanced, the criticism of violence in video games by the media has decreased.

Anyone think we should keep studying the effects of violent video games?

There has been a lot of research over the last 15 years or so into how violent video games affect those that play them and not a bit of it has convinced a single, solitary court in the U.S. that such games pose any danger to those who play them.  Granted, most of the research is really poorly done, something else courts and various academic reviews have pointed out.  Hell, even the authors of some of these studies have admitted to sloppy methodology.

A national press tour for the Fourth Edition of Joel D. Joseph's book chronicling (what he believes) are the worst decisions made by the United States Supreme Court in recent years is about to get underway. The book was published by Imprint Books in December of last year and was recently updated with new material.

Jennifer Ann's Group announced the start of its 2014 video game competition to raise awareness about and (hopefully) prevent teen dating violence. The seventh annual Life.Love. Game Design Challenge urges game developers and individuals to design a game that raises awareness on the very real issue of teen dating violence. The group was founded in 2008 by Drew Crecente, who lost his daughter Jennifer Anne in 2006. Jennifer Ann Crecente was a high school honors student that was murdered by an ex-boyfriend on February 15, 2006.

Cultural historian Richard Slotkin talks about Newtown shooter Adam Lanza in a rather lengthy interview with journalist Bill Moyers. The interview touches upon some other topics as well, but a fair bit of it is spent discussing Adam Lanza's behavior, his fascination with guns and violent video games, and his deep study of school shootings dating back to the late 1800's.

On this week's show, hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight are joined by Ben Hayward, who wrote an interesting article last week about how video game players are often gun owners too, and how the government often tries to pit one group against the other. Andrew also reveals the results of last week's poll concerning the Mighty No. 9 and the possibility that the developer behind the game might get sued by Capcom.

The latest episode of South Park on Comedy Central is called "Informative Murder Porn," and deals with investigative murder shows on Cable TV and Minecraft, of all things.

When the kids of South Park learn that their parents are watching shows on OWN and Discovery ID about sex and murder (and believe that it will lead to their parents killing each other), they use a mobile phone app to block the shows on cable TV. The app uses questions only a kid would know about things you do in Minecraft.

Jennifer Ann’s Group has released the top award-winning video game from its 2013 Life. Love. Game Design Challenge. The first place winning game is Love in the Dumpster by Jean Hehn of Belgium-based developer Another Kind. Love in the Dumpster is the fourth video game to be released from the 2013 Life.Love. Game Design Challenge and is free to play to increase awareness about teen dating violence.

Australian nurse Katrina Fincham had struck it big by playing World of Warcraft. After earning around $75,000 by farming and selling gold in the popular MMORPG from Blizzard, she decided to convert that cold hard cash into cold hard gold bullion. After doing that she put it in her wall safe at her Adelaide home. All was right with the world, but then something horrible happened: her house was robbed and her wall safe was emptied!

The United States Navy has commissioned Organic Motion to create a Kinect-enabled simulation game that addresses the issue of rape. Rape and sexual harassment have been a topic of heated debate in Washington this month as lawmakers such as New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (supported by republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky) seek to move the oversight of rape cases from the military to civilian courts. Mainly Gillibrand is seeking this solution because the U.S.

Jennifer Ann’s Group has released the third-place winning video game from the 2013 Life. Love. Game Design Challenge. The 2013 Life. Love. Game Design Challenge asked developers to create games that raised awareness about the dangers of Teen dating violence. Jennifer Ann's Group is a charity dedicated to the cause and named after Jennifer Ann Crecente, who was murdered by an ex-boyfriend.

An extensive and exclusive report over on Polygon reveals that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are getting closer to pursuing the Obama Administration edict to study the correlation between violent media (music, movies, television and video games) and gun violence. The President called for more research in January of this year in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Jennifer Ann’s Group, an Atlanta-based 501(c)(3) charity dedicated to preventing teen dating violence through "awareness, education, and advocacy;" announced the winners of the 2013 Life. Love. Game Design Challenge. The competition asked participants to create games that raised awareness about teen dating violence and appealed to students. One other key element of all of this year's winners is that they raise awareness about teen dating violence without using any violence in gameplay.

A clip from the recently released film Video Games: The Movie offers a number of game developers talking about violence in video games and the leap some researchers have made in trying to connect playing games with real-world violent acts. Speaking during the short clip are Gearbox Software creative designer Mikey Neumann, Former Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski Video Games Live creator and composer Tommy Tallarico, and Blizzard Entertainment chief creative officer Rob Pardo.

Researchers at the University of Connecticut and Wake Forest University claim that when players fight against human-looking opponents, those players become more aggressive. They even go so far as to say that games with these types of opponents in them may be more likely to provoke violent thoughts and words than games where monsters are the enemy.

New Jersey Senators Raymond Lesniak and M. Teresa Ruiz - both Democrats - have managed to push a proposal (bill S-2715) through the Senate. The bill commissions the New Jersey Department of Education to create a pamphlet that would provide information for parents about violent media. The proposal was part of Senate Democrats' gun safety plan. According to PolitikerNJ, the proposal has passed the Senate by a vote of 36-0 and is heading to the Assembly.

Government Security News offers an interesting story on a recent speech given by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who you may recall is the man associated with "Killology" and the man who often refers to first-person shooter video games as "murder simulators." No doubt emboldened by recent shootings in the United States, Grossman is probably finding it easier to spread his anti-video game message.

The murder trial of Chris Harris from Arminton, Illinois began earlier this month in Peoria, Illinois. Harris is accused of murdering Rick and Ruth Gee and three of their children with a tire iron in the family’s Beason home in late September 2009. One of the children, a three-year-old girl, survived the attack. Prosecutors laid out what happened after brothers Chris and Jason Harris, intoxicated from a night of drinking and doing cocaine visited the Gee home in search of marijuana.