Valve cooperates in banning Steam mod for depicting “historical revisionism” - AUTOMATON WEST
Valve cooperates in banning Steam mod for depicting “historical revisionism” - AUTOMATON WEST
Valve complied with a request from South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee to locally block a Mount & Blade: Warband mod, after which it's author deleted it.
They updated the article to provide further context:
Later, in June 2025, the mod’s original uploader deleted it from Steam entirely. In other words, Valve did not remove the mod from Steam (as our original article suggested).
So Valve only restricted access in South Korea, not the rest of the world.
The Gwangju Uprising was a series of student-led pro-democratic demonstrations that took place in Korea in 1980. These protests are known to have been violently suppressed by the military, resulting in a massacre of civilians, but the mod depicted protesters as armed and violent criminals (according to YNA), thus framing the military regime’s brutality as justified. Additionally, the mod brandished the image of military dictator Chun Doo Hwan as its cover.
Sounds like the right thing to do.
EDIT:
Valve has denied reports its pulled a controversial mod from Steam around the world at the request of the South Korean government, saying the mod was only blocked in South Korea and only because it broke local laws. The mod's author is said to be behind its global removal.
EDIT: This was important information I was not privy to when I originally made this comment. This makes more sense and is completely understandable.
Original comment below:
I feel like this opens the door to banning any "alternative history" setting for a game or mod on Steam.
For example, if someone wanted to make a mod about WWII but aliens invaded Earth and the Allies and Axis decided to make an agreement to become allies to repel the alien invasion, how would that be different from this? That would effectively make Nazis "good guys" in that alternative historical setting. Obviously, that is something that never happened in real history, but if someone is interested in real historical events, it should be on them to do their research, not a video game developer or a mod author.
Unless there is specific context where a government is pointing to this mod saying that's "how it really happened," would not a disclaimer saying that the events in the game are not based on reality and set in an alternative timeline be sufficient?
For such mods, there is pretty much always a very firm emphasis on "this is a work of fiction" when starting the game/mod. Example is the Assassin's Creed games, where they don't always have historic accuracy, but that's okay because they have emphasized that this is a liberty they have taken, and they have already made the user aware of it and agreed to the terms.
This mod however (without having tried it myself) does not make any emphasis on this, and hence uncritically portrays it as part of real events.
I mean, any person that tries to learn history from video games or movies alone is pretty dumb. In order for it to be entertaining, artistic liberties often need to be taken which usuaally means the final product is not historically accurate. The thing with Assassin's Creed games is that where history was involved, in the past they tried to be as accurate to real life as possible. The layouts of cities, the appearance and roles of real historic characters, etc. In more recent years they have tossed that out the window, but historic accuracy on elements not related to the assassin storyline was something Assassin's Creed prided itself on.
Even still, most only have a single text screen at the very beginning that just says "this is a work of fiction." I don't know that I would call that emphasis, but it is present. I also haven't tried this mod myself, but I don't see that it would be portraying itself as real events unless it says "this is based on real events." I have always assumed that video games are a work of fiction, even if they are based on real events. If I wanted to learn more about the real events, I would do research on my own.
I suppose at the end of the day more context is needed. Did Valve contact the mod author prior to takedown to request a change in the mod description to add a "work of fiction" tag and the author refused? If Valve just straight up removed it without even contacting the author, I think that is not good.
I am concerned that censorship might become greater with this action. What other governments will say to Valve "remove X or Y game/mod because it is offensive or portrays real life characters or events improperly?" Ideally none, but still. I don't exactly agree with the context of this mod and entirely understand why it would be offensive, but at the same time I think that a mod author or game developer should be free to create whatever they want, without fear of censorship removing their work.
Long live gaben.
Honestly, I'm worried for what might happen if steam ever becomes dependent on how happy shareholders are with the amount of money they can squeeze from their users.
A lot of things on steam are not cheap, but the platform itself is really really good.
Keep it up chaps.