Reign Of Dwarf blames Russian hate extortion.
AnkleBreaker Studio is the developer of Reign of Dwarf, a game that recently got yanked from Steam and replaced with the above “deleted” placeholder text. But what is interesting about Reign of Dwarf isn’t that it was delisted, that happens literally every day on Steam to the tune of hundreds of games every year.
What’s interesting is the why. In a blog post earlier this week, the folks at Anklebreaker put the blame on a negative review campaign led by a group of Russians.
Throughout our journey with Reign of Dwarf, we’ve encountered numerous challenges, some within our anticipation and others that caught us off guard. Among these, a particularly disheartening issue was dealing with unsolicited negative reviews and attempted blackmail. A group, self-identified as originating from Russia, demanded payments in exchange for positive reviews. Their demands were met with our refusal, leading to a deliberate campaign to tarnish our reputation with negative reviews.
This is…not surprising. Russian bots and malicious actors generally located out of Russia have been a virus on Steam since the days of Greenlight back in 2016. Every so often random devs get targeted by these Russian groups offering positive reviews for payment, who then retaliate with negative reviews when their demands aren’t met.
In announcing their decision to cease development and move on to a new title, Anklebreaker revealed that all owners of Reign of Dwarf will get their next game free of charge.
Just keep an eye on those shady Russians.
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