Modding News

Transparency on Recent Actions Taken

posted on July 6, 2021

Hello squaddies,

We recently made a change to Squad that allowed mods available in the Steam Workshop to be used on licensed servers without the need to be present on OWI’s previous list of certified mods. We believe this is a significant and welcome improvement to help spread the awareness of modifications and to provide new and exciting experiences within the framework of Squad. Considering this change, it is also more important than ever for us to uphold the agreements we have made with Steam and their Workshop, alongside our own, to ensure we aren’t in breach of terms of service.

It has recently come to our attention that a modification is currently in breach of these agreements, notably for containing sexually explicit imagery and limiting the mod’s availability to those who may want to play it. This modification has a built-in ban list that exists regardless of which server is hosting the mod (At the time of writing, only a server of their choosing was allowed to run the mod). While these are a breach of Workshop agreements, it is also against the spirit of modding, building, and creating works that others can enjoy and share around to increase their exposure.

We have been in contact with the creator of this mod and explained our reasoning for why we need to remove this mod from the Workshop. We’ve explained that once the sexually explicit content has been removed and any in-built ban list is removed, it can return. Our aim is not to watch over each modification added to the Workshop, but we do act on reports of violations brought to our attention. To not act accordingly would be a mistake and a breach of our agreement to the modders wider community.

Hopefully, this can have a positive conclusion if the conditions are correctly met. We love to see this new resurgence of mods on community servers. We want to continue this forward momentum of increasing their exposure and the potential of new and fresh modifications for players to try out.

Offworld out.

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