// PC GAMER — GAMING
Steam game disables mods after facing its second Workshop malware outbreak this year
A self-replicating virus is once again wreaking havoc on People Playground.
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And Studio Minus seems to agree. In a blog post from last month, zooi—People Playground's primary developer—called the game a "technical hellscape," which makes it "technically impossible to properly sandbox mods in their current state." While the studio claims that the software has measures in place to prevent malicious mod activity, zooi called it a "hopeless arms race."
When a studio's developer doesn't seem confident about the viability of their project's security measures, you shouldn't either. But while People Playground seems like a particularly intense dumpster fire, 2026 hasn't inspired much confidence in the safety of Steam Workshop overall.
Since the year started, we've seen at least three other cases of Workshop-related malware incidents: first malicious Project Zomboid mods surfaced in April, then virus-laden anime ladies emerged in Wallpaper Engine in June, and then malware-infested Meccha Chameleon maps led to its Discord getting hacked in July.
It's the double-edged sword of Steam's relatively open publishing platform. We get to enjoy a bounty of games from small developers—but they can't always offer the same expectation of software security as their more established counterparts.
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Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.
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