It's been a tough few weeks for "Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic (opens in new tab)," a hardcore Soviet city builder from Slovakian studio 3Division; in mid-February, the studio announced that a former "respected member of the community" had The game has been removed from Steam (opens in new tab) after a former "respected member of the community" submitted a DMCA request against the game. The reason was that the developer had taken down a guide he wrote, "Cosmonaut Mode," when he added "Real Mode (open in new tab)" to the game last December.

The fan (reportedly a lawyer) made legal threats against the team and copyright infringement against the Workers and Resources YouTube channel. When that didn't get the response he wanted, he filed a DMCA against the game itself on Steam.3Division said the takedown only worked because DMCA requests are handled by Steam's automated system, but even so, it took more than two weeks to remove the game from the platform. However, as Kotaku (opens in new tab) discovered, "Workers and Resources" has been back on Steam since March 4.

"We are happy to announce that our game is back in the store," 3Division said Saturday (opens in new tab), apologizing "to those who were trying to purchase the game but were unable to." The studio said it had "underestimated the situation. Presumably referring to its policy of ignoring disgruntled fans when they first started making threats, the situation "quickly escalated to the point where it posed a threat to our games." The studio now plans to "return fully to development and make this issue a thing of the past."

It is unclear what happened to this angry fan, but he probably won't be contributing any new guides in the future. When the game was removed from Steam, 3Division said that "there is nothing in his work about game design that directly relates to the game's code" and that his guide does not provide "a technical solution for the development team to use," but still, before he starts making legal threats, he will stated that he intended to add the names of the complaining players to the credits as contributors.

But instead, "because he chose to coerce and abuse," the studio "decided to ignore him, never mentioning the name of the challenge he allegedly 'invented' again." Unfortunately, that policy eventually bounced back on them. They should have conducted a show trial instead.