Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is a city-builder that has a particular focus on how urban planning worked alongside the communist economies of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It’s not for everyone, then, but it certainly has its fans.
Sadly those fans are now the only ones able to play the game, because it is now unable to be purchased after a DMCA takedown reportedly got the game removed from Steam’s marketplace.
In a post made by the game’s developers, Slovakian studio 3Division, it’s claimed that a player, “once a respected member of our community”, has gone rogue and begun attacking the game’s online presence, trying to get everything from trailers to the game’s website taken down.
Why? It’s alleged that this player had written a guide on a way to play the game more realistically, and that while the developers had already been working on a game mode that did just that, they had agreed to add him to the game’s credits as a goodwill gesture given his prominence in the community.
3Division say this player then, having been told they wouldn’t added to the credits until after this new mode had been completed and released, “started to abuse the YouTube report system issuing copyright strikes to one of our most helpful influencers”, and that as a result of this behaviour they withdrew their offer to officially thank him.
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In response to this, it’s claimed the player then reported the game’s website and had it taken down (the link now directs back to 3Division’s main company page), then began reporting other official YouTube videos from the studio as well. Matters have now escalated to the point where the game itself has been taken off Steam due to a DMCA request, and the player is “now claiming that they own the rights to the [realistic] game mode”. For what it’s worth, 3Division say they are “are working to resolve the issue”.