Galactically petty Half-Life 2 modders ban 'anticitizens' who criticised their mod by targeting their Steam IDs, leave the proof visible in code: 'Script kiddies vibes from this lmao'
In an act of incredibly targeted pettiness, the developers behind a Half-Life 2 mod that's been available since 2022 have managed to ban a select group of YouTubers from playing the latest version of their work. The mod in question, Half-Life 2: Overcharged, is an «overhaul modification» that adds new enemies and weapons as well as restoring some cut content, promising new ways to play and so on (thanks, RPS).
Except it wasn't all that great. Looking over the user reviews, people generally seem to have had some fun with Overcharged but reckon it could've used a bit more work, and doesn't live up to some of the more grandiose claims. So far, so normal: There are a thousand mods that fit such a description.
Certain YouTubers who specialise in playing and talking about Half-Life 2 mods made videos about Overcharged in the time since its release, and they weren't very kind to it. Again, pretty normal. But last month the Overcharged developers released a 2.0 update for the mod, promising fixes for many of the issues raised by players, and when certain YouTubers went to try this out, they got a nasty surprise.
For them, loading up the mod sees the game crash, and subsequently display an error message that says «STOP talking SH1T about us!»
YouTuber NoClick is one of those affected, and initially assumed this was just a problem with his installs or the mod… before realising that the error message is perhaps a little too pointed. Checking in with some other Half-Life 2 fanciers, he realised that fellow YouTuber Radiation Hazard also had this issue, and in fact four YouTubers in total were targeted in this way.
How? «There is proof the Half-Life 2: Overcharged developers used my SteamID, Scolcer's SteamID, Keron's SteamDB and Radiation Hazard's SteamID to ban us from playing the mod,» says NoClick, linking to the mod's code which shows it running checks for all of the above Steam IDs, and referring to them as «anticitizens.»
«You fixed absolutely nothing,» says NoClick in
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