Misery returns to Steam after alleged DMCA takedown issued by GSC Game World

Post-apocalyptic co-op survival shooter Misery was reinstated on Steam on Nov. 13, 2025, following its removal on Nov. 8, 2025, after GSC Game World issued a DMCA strike against the game.

To celebrate the lifted ban, the game’s developer launched a special 50% discount for the Supporter Bundle throughout the weekend of Nov. 14 – Nov. 16, 2025.

“This Wednesday [Nov. 12, 2025], we received a message from GSC’s lawyer team elaborating on their claims against MISERY, and we resolved this misunderstanding,” says a celebratory post on the title’s Steam page.

According to the post, GSC also requested that the creators of Misery remove any references or Easter eggs related to their Stalker games. The Misery development studio, Platypus Entertainment, and publisher Ytopia agreed to this and subsequently removed them.

As one of the main issue that led to the ban, the team behind Misery outlines a helicopter model in the files which was unintentionally left in the resources as a legacy leftover, following the game’s evolution from an initial educational, non-commercial project into a commercial product starting in 2025. According to the devs, it was never used in the game, and players never saw it.

“Guitar songs. GSC games used popular folk songs as their guitar melodies, including Tsyganochka, for instance. MISERY dev’s friend wrote original covers of some of these songs, and they were used in MISERY as guitar songs. NO ORIGINAL FILES FROM GSC GAMES WERE USED. 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,” outlined the second main issue Misery‘s dev team.

As of the time of writing, launched on Oct. 23, 2025, Misery has a “Very Positive” rating on Steam with 6,655 reviews.