Just under a week after disappearing from store listings due to an alleged DMCA strike from Stalker series developer GSC Game World, Sovietcore postnuclear survival game Misery is once again available for purchase on Steam. In a Steam news post, Misery developer Platypus Entertainment said that the game has been updated to address GSC's DMCA complaints.
"This Wednesday, we received a message from GSC lawyer team elaborating on their claims against Misery, and we resolved this misunderstanding," Platypus Entertainment said.
Platypus Entertainment maintains that Misery "does not infringe on any GSC-owned IP regarding the world, setting, characters, etc. as claimed in the original notice," but acknowledged that "there were two issues we were not aware of at the time of the strike" involving Stalker assets or creative works.
Specifically, Misery files contained a GSC helicopter model that Platypus said was "left in the resources as a legacy leftover" from the game's early days as an "educational, non-commercial project." While the helicopter model never appeared in gameplay, the Misery developer said the model's inclusion was "definitely an oversight on the dev side" and has been permanently removed.
Additionally, Platypus has removed some of Misery's guitar tracks, which it claimed were "original covers" of guitar melodies featured in Stalker that the studio believed to be "popular folk songs." While Platypus said no GSC audio assets were used in Misery, "it turned out that some (not all!) of the songs were specifically written or exclusively licensed by GSC, and they asked us to remove these songs, which we immediately did."
Stalker-themed easter eggs, like a recreation of the ruined arch featured in Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl artwork, have also been removed at GSC's request.
Platypus said the DMCA takedown was "extremely painful financially" thanks to the game's delisting during its launch period and an ensuing rash of refund requests, but asked that players who may have negatively reviewed GSC games to "please go back and revert these comments," calling review-bombing "harmful to the gaming community."
"And please do not insult other players or GSC, especially using racial slurs or politic themes," Platypus said. "These will not be tolerated."
While the Misery developer is taking a conciliatory tone, its initial response to the game's delisting was markedly less amicable: Shortly after the takedown announcement emerged, redditors posted screenshots from the Misery Discord showing a message from an outraged developer calling the Stalker creators "GSK GAY WORLD" and using an ableist slur.
The developer later apologized for "old posts and comments that included inappropriate and offensive statements," but not before other Reddit users shared more alleged screenshots of Platypus Discord moderators and users expressing slur-laden support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where GSC is based. If those screenshots were legitimate, the messages have since been deleted.
In its news post announcing Misery's return, Platypus said that it has now "established a strict policy on Discord moderation, so no anarchy dumpster fire as it was before."
"Lessons learned, now back to work," Platypus said.
