Turns out, something gold can stay. In the wake of Wizards of the Coast's "mistaken" DMCA that scoured it from the internet, Baldur's Village is back up on Nexus Mods. It was out of commission for a couple of days after the original takedown took it out on March 29 or, in other words, it was out of commission until people noticed what WotC had done and compelled it to beat a hasty retreat.
If you're not up on the news: Baldur's Village is a mod for Stardew Valley that puts all your Baldur's Gate 3 faves into the game. It inserts "20+ new beautifully drawn characters, 6 new locations, new shops with special items, events, and more." More importantly, it gives you yet another avenue by which you can romance Astarion.
It's a popular thing. So popular, in fact, that it even earned the imprimatur of Larian CEO Swen Vincke when it hit full release early in March. Vincke tweeted that "so much love" went into the mod and called it "amazing work!" Unfortunately, that didn't seem to help the mod when it came time for WotC to fire off its DMCAs (the company later apologised for the takedown, calling it a mistake and echoing Vincke's praise of the project as a "great mod").
But maybe Vincke's subsequent disapproval of the takedown helped, because now all that is behind us, and both the Stardew Valley and BG3 communities are more than happy about it. "So happy to see it being back!" celebrates one user on the mod's Nexus page, while another rubs it in Wizards' face a little by declaring "Victory over WOTC!"
Celebrations are happening far and wide, actually. Over on the BG3 subreddit, the triumphant revival of Baldur's Village has scored itself over 5,000 upvotes and a whole bunch of excited comments. "If I didn't already have a reason to want to play Stardew... I do now," says AspenDarke. "We’re so back," says OhSubs.
And then, well, quite a lot of people unwilling to take WotC at its word that the DMCA was accidental. Baldur's Village might be back up, but after a long string of PR gaffes and fan disappointments, this is just another mark in the ledger against WotC for a lot of TTRPG fans.
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