Something fishy is going on in the community of Fire Pro Wrestling World. Gamers have discovered that Adolf Hitler mods are being systematically removed from the Steam Workshop section for Spike Chunsoft’s wrestling title.
A thread over the Steam forums outlines the consternation some community members were feeling when they discovered that some of their favorite Hitler mods were either made “incompatible” or banned altogether.
Uber-n00bie made some salient points, writing…
“Just noticed every wrestler resembling Adolf Hitler (there were a number of them available mid-2019) has been removed from the workshop, likely in late 2019. I was hoping to start a new series involving historical figures (beloved heroes, inventors, and genocidal murders alike), but was surprised to find every single Adolf Hitler has been taken down. Annoyingly if anyone is looking to beat the snot out of Hitler, seems you’ll have to spend the time to make your own now instead.
“I don’t recall any of these workshop pages genuinely glorifying or encouraging genocide in any way. Were these wrestlers removed strictly because of their relation to genocide in general? Because there are still countless historical figures up on the workshop guilty of this. Even if we’re just looking at murderous dictators the past 100 years, compared to nazi Germany, powers ruled by Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong are separately responsible for killing 10-100 TIMES more people — both represented by wrestlers on this workshop since 2017, and both still downloadable today. Not to mention all the ‘non-family friendly’ fictional characters dotting the landscape. So I find this sort of cherry-picked censorship very bizarre. […]”
He also points out that games featuring Hitler can still be purchased from the Steam store, from Wolfenstein to Goebbels, and everything else in between.
If you attempt to access previous Steam workshop pages that contained Hitler creations, you’ll run into an error screen, as pictured below.
Some of the other Hitler and Hitler-adjacent mods are still cataloged on Workshop, but hidden under the “incompatible” tag, such as jonathonbird810’s Adolf Hitler or SAM’s Adolf Hitler.
You can, however, still download the parody character from Obediah_Iscariot named Dolph Himmler.
You can see him taking on He-Man and Skeletor below.
In the thread they weren’t able to figure out if this was the doing of Spike Chunsoft or the Steam moderators.
The thread is still open, and some of the fans of Fire Pro Wrestling World are still trying to figure out who is responsible for removing the Hitler creations.
There’s nothing in the subscriber agreement stating that you can’t make historical figures, or that certain kinds of creations that the Steam moderators find offensive will be removed.
Right now there’s just a silent hand of censorship moving through to remove the Hitler creations sprinkled throughout the Fire Pro Wrestling World community.
What makes it so bad is that controversial people like Barack Obama can be found on Steam Workshop page for FPWW, along with Osama Bin Laden, Joseph Stalin, and even despised criminals like OJ Simpson.
Apparently someone either at Valve or Spike Chunsoft has it in for Hitler community creations appearing in the Steam Workshop section of Fire Pro Wrestling World.
(Thanks for the news tip Erobotan)