Overview

• South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee formally asked Valve to block and pull the Gwangju Running Man mod after initially banning it domestically.
• The total conversion mod for Mount & Blade: Warband rewrote the 1980 Gwangju Uprising to justify military brutality and glorify the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan.
• Valve’s June compliance marked the first global removal of user-generated content from Steam at a government’s behest rather than for legal or policy violations.
• The mod’s creator subsequently withdrew the content worldwide, leaving Steam to confront potential future demands for state-driven censorship.
• Observers warn the precedent could encourage foreign governments to leverage Steam’s moderation policies to suppress politically sensitive content.