Update 7/7/25: Valve has reached out to clarify that the company did not remove the Gwangju Running Man mod from Steam worldwide, and that it had only blocked the mod's distribution in South Korea as it was in violation of South Korean law. According to Valve, the mod author was the one who removed it from Steam entirely in June. This puts Valve's actions more firmly in line with its prior moderation decisions outlined at the end of this story.
First reported by Korean gaming website This Is Game, and in English by Automaton, Valve acquiesced to a South Korean government request that it block distribution of an offensive Mount and Blade: Warband mod within the country. The mod was subsequently taken down by its author, leading to the misapprehension that Valve had banned the mod worldwide over South Korean law.
The mod itself is a baffling and risible piece of right wing esoterica, converting the medieval sandbox Mount and Blade: Warband to a modern-day setting and presenting a warped version of the events of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, a pivotal moment in the history of South Korea.
The 1980 protests in Gwangju against South Korean military dictator Chun Doo-hwan were violently repressed by the government, provoking an armed uprising that Chun responded to with even greater brutality.
Up to 2,300 people were killed by government forces, and after the overthrow of the dictatorship, the Gwangju Uprising has been commemorated with a day of remembrance as a key moment in South Korea's struggle under a string of US-backed dictatorships in the second half of the 20th century.
Gwangju Running Man reportedly presented a revisionist narrative of the event popular with South Korea's right wing, one sympathetic to Chun Doo-hwan, slanderous to the memory of the victims and protestors, and justifying the massacres conducted by government forces.
This Is Game reported that the South Korean Game Rating and Administration Committee initially blocked the mod's distribution in South Korea before requesting that Valve remove the mod from the Steam Workshop worldwide, but Valve has clarified that it was only requested that the company block the mod's distribution in South Korea.
Typically, Valve operates under singularly laissez-faire content moderation guidelines, slow to respond to reports, and rarely removing mods or games from Steam unless they break the law, manipulate the platform in some fashion, or reach a critical threshold of negative attention. A few instructive examples include:
- No Mercy: A game with "unavoidable non-consensual sex" that was banned from sale in the UK, Canada, and Australia. Was notably only pulled from sale worldwide by the developers themselves.
- Domina: A gladiator management sim where, several years after launch, the developer began using thin patch notes as an outlet for anti-trans invective. Removed from sale by Valve after multiple warnings.
- Active Shooter: A "school shooting simulator" seemingly banned by Valve less over its content, and more the developer's "history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation."
- Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque: An FPS where the player controls a Palestinian fighter killing IDF soldiers, including recreations of/references to the October 7 attacks. Banned from sale in the UK, Germany, and Australia.
