Valve Removes Mount & Blade: Warband Mod at the Request of South Korean Government

Valve cooperated with the South Korean government and removed a Mount & Blade: Warband mod that glorified the country’s military dictatorship. According to PC Gamer, this might be the first time Valve has taken down something from Steam due to a “government’s objection to the content in question.”

The now-removed mod, Gwangju Running Man, transferred the game into a modern depiction of Korea’s Gwangju Democratization Movement, which was a student-led pro-democratic demonstration that took place in the country in 1980. According to a report by Automaton regarding the mod, these protests were violently suppressed by the military at the time.

The Mount & Blade: Warband mod gave the protesters weapons, which depicted them as violent criminals. This, in turn, made it look like the government’s violent suppression was justified. To make matters worse, the mod also shows a picture of military dictator Chun Doo-hwan as its cover.

Neither PC Gamer nor Automaton mentioned when the mod was originally uploaded, but both outlets confirmed that it was deleted from Steam as of June 12.

Mount & Blade: Warband is a standalone expansion pack to the strategy RPG Mount & Blade. It was released initially in 2010 physically, and it took four years before it was made available on Steam.