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Fan uses DMCA strike to have Workers & Resources removed from Steam

Fan uses DMCA strike to have Workers & Resources removed from Steam

Citybuilder Workers and Resources: Soviet Union has been removed from Steam thanks to a DMCA takedown notice.

Per an update on the title's Steam Community page, the boss of Slovakian game developer 3Division Peter Adamcik (pictured) said that the request was filed by "once a respected member of our community" who believes that they own the rights to project's Realistic Mode.

This is due to the fact that the user, Storpappa, wrote a guide for a more challenging take on Workers and Resources, which they dubbed Cosmonaut Mode. 3Division then added the aforementioned Realistic Mode, which caused the user to demand in-game credit. The developer said that they would add Storpappa's name to the credits alongside other people who made guides or challenges, which the user found unacceptable.

From there, 3Division claims that Storpappa issued DMCA takedown notices against a YouTuber for not linking back to his guide for Cosmonaut Mode, before doing the same to Workers and Resources' website and its Steam page.

3Division is in touch with Valve to resolve the matter.

"There is nothing in his work in terms of game design that would relate directly to game’s code, and he does not offer any technical solutions for the development team to use," Adamcik wrote.

"He literally just created a guide with some possible way to play the game and called it Cosmonaut mode, but it is not helping the development process. Only one thing he was helpful in, is that the popularity of his guide showed us how much people wanted to play the game in a realistic and more challenging way."


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.