Fan claims indie dev stole their popular Steam city builder from him
An angry fan who wrote a guide for how to play popular Steam city builder Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic claims the indie devs stole the game from him – and got Valve to remove its Steam page. Developer 3DIVISION posted an update on the Workers & Resources’ Steam community page explaining why the game is no longer available for purchase on PC.
The fan was once a “respected” member of the Workers & Resources community, 3DVISION’s Peter Adamcik said, and had contributed several helpful guides for the game. One of them included tips and methods for playing Workers & Resources in a more realistic manner. Adamcik said the team was already working on a similar mode before the guide was published and offered to mention the fan in the credits.
That mention got delayed, as the team worked on other aspects of the game and waited to update the credits until they were finished. What happened next is a little murky. 3DIVISION either told the fan the credits would be updated later or said they weren’t going to add his name to them because the contribution wasn’t new.
Whatever happened, the fan started saying he made the mode, and 3DIVISION stole it from him. Adamcik said he started issuing DMCA strikes against influencers playing the game on YouTube and then filed a similar report on Steam. Valve uses bots to handle DMCA claims, similar to YouTube, and the Workers & Resources page has been removed.
“It seems like he just abuse the fact he is attorney at law - he will definitively handle the suit cheaper than us, so he think he may get anything he wanted from us because we will not go for costly suit,” Adamcik told Kotaku in a statement. “But legally he not have any ground under his foot to stay on and we will probably fight to the end! According to our opinion he is at big risk also - reputation, financial damage, also what he is doing is not with ethic either) If the game stays banned this will result into a enormous financial damage (aside from suit cost) for us.”
3DIVISION is working to resolve the issue with the fan and have Valve republish the game’s page.
