Mod Encouraging Piracy Sparks Fan Battle on Steam

Since June, Chinese players have been bombarding strategy game Endless Legend with poor reviews. This came after developer Amplitude Studios removed a mod for Chinese language support that linked to a pirated version of the game. Last night, other players took to Reddit and organized to vote the game’s rating back up.

The mod in question was removed after it was discovered the work contained a download link to an older version of the game. This was a violation of Steam’s terms of service. The removal was intended to be temporary, according to a post by the developer. The mod never returned to the Steam Workshop.

Lamenting the mod’s loss and frustrated with a lack of officially supported language options, fans began to downvote the game en masse, lowering the game’s rating to “mixed.”

“For us, that mod developer is a helpful and respectful man,” one fan explained at the start of the controversy. “You didn’t show any respects to him, which mean you didn’t show any respects to us.”

“It hurts our hearts,” another player added.

Last night, reddit user _break_it_down_ highlighted the low rating. The thread was cross posted to /r/4xgaming, /r/Games, and /r/China. Fans organized to upvote the game with positive reviews.

In less than 24 hours, these fans managed to bring the rating up to “very positive.”

Steam recently overhauled how reviews function, angering some developers. Developers are highly reliant on reviews to aid with their positioning in the Steam store. This situation highlights just how much fans can impact a game positively and negatively.

The visibility of these reviews has Amplitude Studios seeking a potential solution that will please their fans. They are looking into ways to offer a Chinese language option to fans.

“We want to make the game available in Chinese,” a Steam forum post states. “And [we] are ready to work with the mod’s author for their work to be recognized.”