Great news, Survivors. The DMCA strike was lifted, and MISERY is back in store.
Thank you to our community for the awesome unity and support, it really helped us get through tough times.
To celebrate the peace in Zaslavie, we are launching a special 50% discount for the Supporter Bundle throughout the weekend (If you'd like, you can buy the supporter DLC separately for full price).
Last Friday we received a DMCA strike notice from GSC and MISERY went dark immediately. Same day we filed a counter notice, protesting the clauses listed in claim against MISERY.
This Wednesday we received a message from GSC lawyer team elaborating on their claims against MISERY, and we resolved this misunderstanding.
While we are adamant that MISERY does not infringe on any GSC-owned IP regarding the world, setting, characters, etc., as claimed in the original notice, there were two issues we were not aware of at the time of the strike and which were not mentioned in the DMCA claim.
1. Helicopter model in the files. MISERY is an evolution of educational, non-commercial projects that was trailing for around 4 years and started forming into MISERY in the beginning of 2025. This model was unintentionally left in the resources as a legacy leftover, but it was NEVER used in the game, and players NEVER saw it in the game. This is definitely an oversight on the dev side, but it did no harm. Now it has been found (thanks to community research) and permanently removed.
2. 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.
GSC also asked us not to include any references or Easter Eggs related to their games, and while it is sad, and we only wanted to have a love letter homage such as the Arch, we agree and have removed it.
Again, no assets from GSC games were ripped and used in MISERY.
And this is it.
MISERY is inspired by many cultural artifacts, movies, books, games, but it is a totally unique IP.
Zaslavie is not connected to other universes, nor does it use or directly refer to any characters, events, storylines, etc.
We wish the DMCA claim had not been used as the first step in communication. A simple email could have solved it in minutes without any drama, or at least a clear claim on what was wrong in the DMCA instead of just referring to Soviet buildings, plot, storyline, characters, etc., which MISERY clearly does not infringe upon.
But it is what it is. Legally, it is very easy to file a DMCA claim and shut down any game, and the burden of proof of innocence is on the defendant's side. The question lies in the use of such power.
For our team, it was extremely painful financially, as it led to a wave of refunds and just shutting down a game for a week in the release month, which for many is a death sentence. But thanks to your support, we do have resources to continue development. We have now hired a small team to reinforce development, and everything that was promised will be delivered on time. You can expect a big update next month and a series of patches focused on performance, QoL features, and bug fixes (we hear you about patch notes!).
We also want to ask players who negatively reviewed GSC games: we understand you wanted to help, we appreciate you, but please go back and revert these comments if they are not connected to the game itself and were written in support of the cause. We do not support review-bombing practices, they are harmful to the gaming community. And please do not insult other players or GSC, especially using racial slurs or politic themes - this will not be tolerated.
We also expect review-bombing towards MISERY in retaliation, as the whole drama has upset many people. We hope it will not affect us too much, and you can counterbalance it with your honest reviews.
We have established a strict policy on Discord moderation, so no anarchy dumpster fire as it was before.
Once again, we THANK YOU for your support and feedback. Tons of likes, thousands of comments, videos, posts. You literally saved MISERY with your support and we sincerely thank you.
Lessons learned, now back to work.
For Zaslavie!
PS. After MISERY returning, there is a fake DEMO button on the Steam page that does not work and we can not remove it on our side.
We reached out to Steam support already to fix it.