Update (2025/07/08 at 9:50 JST): Valve has provided us with important context regarding the deletion of the Gwangju Running Man mod. In March 2025, the company was notified by GRAC that the mod was in violation of South Korean laws. In response, Valve restricted access to the mod only in the Korean region. Later, in June 2025, the mod’s original uploader deleted it from Steam entirely. In other words, Valve did not remove the mod from Steam (as our original article suggested).
Original article:
South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee (GRAC) says Valve agreed to cooperate in taking down a mod that “distorted historical facts” related to the Gwangju Uprising, a pivotal event in the country’s history (as reported by ThisIsGame).
The mod in question is a fan-made total conversion mod of the hit strategy RPG Mount & Blade: Warband, originally uploaded to the game’s Steam Workshop page. Titled “Gwangju Running Man,” the mod transformed Mount & Blade: Warband’s medieval setting into a modern depiction of Korea’s Gwangju Democratization Movement.
The Gwangju Uprising was a series of student-led pro-democratic demonstrations that took place in Korea in 1980. These protests are known to have been violently suppressed by the military, resulting in a massacre of civilians, but the mod depicted protesters as armed and violent criminals (according to YNA), thus framing the military regime’s brutality as justified. Additionally, the mod brandished the image of military dictator Chun Doo Hwan as its cover.
South Korean press speculates that the uploader may have been Chinese, based on reviews by the account being written in Simplified Chinese. However, users online argue that these may be a “cover,” as denial of the Gwangju massacre is more likely to come from Korea’s own far right groups than from abroad. In response to reports, GRAC initially had the Mount & Blade: Warband mod blocked in South Korea, but subsequently teamed up with the Korean government to ask Valve to have the mod suspended worldwide.
Valve complied, and the Gwangju Running Man mod was deleted from Steam as of June 12. Valve commented that it recognizes the importance the historical event has for Korean people. This is a somewhat rare instance of the platform taking acting upon local political and historical sensitivities.
There are thousands of mods on the workshop for just about every game involving war or politics that do revisionism, curious that all those mods where you play as nazi germany that deny war crimes or rewrite the history of war to make nazis sound better are fine, but this is too far. Seems like valve is just an extension of natonazi thought.
Correction: The mod author is from Hong Kong (So no question that they’re Chinese at least nationally) as displayed on their steam profile
Plenty of mods for hoi4 have been taken down for nazi revisionism. At least name an example of your complaints.
If they were sent a legal request by a government board that demanded removal and it was legitimate and recognized, they don’t have a choice in the matter but to remove it .
Mods have been removed on nexus from any game that race swaps/gender swaps established white male characters.
All of this is political. If it was a historical event based on a Communist uprising, where the protestors were armed and destuctive, and the mod made them out to be peaceful with no guns, the mod would remain.
All we ask is for balance, for consistency.
@Glhbb
So because Valve supposedly allows Nazi historical revisionism mods on the workshop (they don’t, you’re literally just lying, but ok), them taking down this specific Korean historical revisionism mod…makes them “natonazi”…?
Do you even hear yourself?
Do you even have a brain? You should consider growing one, and not talking out of your ass and lying about there being nazi mods on the workshop. There are none, those get taken down even faster than this mod was.
New Tiananmen Square mod just dropped
Do tank joyrides over agressive protesters
Get 64 bonus points for drawing the communist china party flag in blood red tank tracks
I appreciate the historical sensitivities especially as this is recent history, but I do think it was wrong to go along with this. South Korea is not as democratic as we like to pretend, so I understand going along with the regime’s wishes in local servers but I don’t think people in other countries should be told what they can and can’t create by the Korean government.
So what if, aren’t games exactly the place for this nonsense? To alter reality? Everything n eds to be censored…. Can’t even fkn breath on this crust
@ToTo
yes lets “balance” historical events to fit your restrictive worldwiew.
hyuck hyuck.
bruh
Video games initially used to be censored to supposedly protect kids. But it was obvious in the first place that this was not the reason
@Alexander R. N.
You can display any flag you want on your Steam profile. It has no bearing on reality.
The South Korean Game Rating and Administration Committee (GRAC) initially blocked the mod’s distribution within the country.
I mean Valve didn’t really cooperate, the mod would be illegal in Korea anyway. I bet it’s not blocked in other countries. I’ve even seen a lot of sites saying Valve agreed to take it off the steam page in every country and Valve got a ton of backlash for it which makes no sense to me, anyone that’s been on Valve for years should know Gabe Newell better than that. It’s stupid. Valve has said in like 2018 they’d officially allow any game or mod as long as it wasn’t illegal and as long as it wasn’t just a trolling game.