Screenshot: The Simpsons
Last month, niche city-builder Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic had a hell of a time after a fan defected and the game’s website and Steam store page were shut down.
As we wrote on February 16th, the fan, allegedly a lawyer, pulled every legal lever to harm the game and its developers:
A post from the game’s developers, Slovak studio 3Division, alleges that one player, “once a respected member of our community,” has gone rogue and started attacking the game’s online presence, trying to sell everything from trailers up get the game’s website torn down.
It is alleged that this player had written a guide on how to play the game more realistically and that while the developers were already working on a game mode that would do just that, they agreed to include it in the credits of the game as goodwill Game’s gesture given his notoriety in the community.
3Division says that after being told that this player would not be added to the credits until this new mode was finalized and released, this player “began abusing the YouTube reporting system by issuing copyright strikes against one of our most helpful influencers.” ”, and so on. As a result of this behavior, they withdrew their offer to officially thank him.
Through a series of DMCA claims, he caused the game’s official website to be removed, he reported official YouTube videos owned by developers 3Division, and finally the game itself was removed from Steam.
However, as of March 4th, the game is back. In a brief post on the freshly restored Steam page for Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, the “development team” says:
Dear community and players,
We’re excited to announce that our game is now back on the store!
We thank you for your patience, support and understanding while we navigated this difficult situation.
We would like to apologize to those who tried to buy the game and couldn’t. We realize we underestimated the situation and it quickly escalated to a point that threatened our game. We wish very much that this had not been the case.
But we’re back on track now and you can enjoy the game to the fullest! We look forward to getting back to full development and getting this matter behind us.
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Cool! I played this game a while ago, and while it’s not for everyone, anyone who hears “a city builder who particularly focuses on how urban planning worked alongside the communist economies of Eastern Europe during the Cold War” hears and doesn’t instantly turning heads—which I’ll admit most sane people probably are—should check it out, it does this one incredible niche thing pretty well!
