UPDATE 06/03/2023: Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, the Soviet city-builder game, is now back on Steam following a DMCA copyright violation from an angry fan, as per original story below.
The game returned to Steam on 4th March, with a message from the game’s development team.
“We thank you for your patience, support and understanding as we navigated this tricky situation,” it reads.
“We want to apologise to those who were looking to purchase the game and were unable to. We realise that we underestimated the situation, and it quickly escalated to a point that posed a threat to our game. We greatly wish that this had not been the case.
“But we are now back on track and you can fully enjoy the game! We are excited to get back fully to the development and put this matter behind us.”
ORIGINAL STORY 20/02/2023:Soviet city-builder PC game Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic has been struck by a DMCA copyright violation issued by an angry fan.
As a result, the game from Slovakian developer 3Division is currently unavailable to purchase on Steam and does not appear in searches, though is still playable by those who have already purchased it.
The claim has been made by a fan of the game who wanted to be included in the game’s credits, but has since gone rogue.
“Recently we got the first enemy of our Soviet Republic,” a statement on Steam from 3Division’s Peter Adamcik reads in response. “This enemy is making our life harder and significantly slowing down the development process. He is, ehm, he WAS once a respected member of our community and one of the best party members, but he decided to betray our Republic, our Party and our ideals.”
3Division began work on a realistic mode for the game, something the developer said was intended from the start but was not a critical feature to be included in Early Access.
The fan has published a guide on how to play the game more realistically. While the developer said it would be happy to include the fan in the credits, he instead has issued a number of copyright strikes.
“As he chose to use extortion and abuse, we became angry about this, and decided to never mention the name of the challenge he allegedly ‘invented’ again, and ignore him,” reads Adamcik’s post, which details the points of the claim.