Last month the niche city builder Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic Had a damn good 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, reportedly an attorney, pulled every legal lever he could to harm the game and its developers:
In a post It is claimed by the game’s developers, Slovakian studio 3Division, that a player “once a respected member of our community” has gone rogue and started attacking the game’s online presence, attempting to download everything from trailers to the website of the game to remove.
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 he would not be added to the credits until this new mode was completed and released, this player then “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 In the end, the game’s official website was removed, official YouTube videos from developer 3Division were reported, and finally the game itself was removed from Steam.
From March 4th however The game is back. In a short 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 dusting instantly – which I’ll admit most sane people probably are – should look at it, it does unbelievable niche thing pretty good!