Iranian Dev Troubles

Why Mahdi Bahrami believes his beautiful puzzle game ENGARE might be taken down from Steam any day

- Alex Wiltshire

In October last year, Mahdi Bahrami released Engare, a beautiful puzzle game about mathematics and geometry. But he was afraid. He was worried that it would be removed from Steam the next day. “I worked on this game for a few years, and it would be so painful if that happened,” he says. What if he’d never get the proceeds from its sales? What if no one would be able to play it?

Bahrami is worried because he’s Iranian. He is technically unable to sell games on Steam because of trade sanctions the US has imposed on Iran since 1979. And he can’t officially be paid the money Engare has earned because most Iranian banks can’t interface with US ones. “The money is not directly coming to Iran, so from Steam’s point of view they are paying someone in the US,” Bahrami says. “I didn’t have any option, but I’m waiting for the day I receive an email saying that they discovered I’m in Iran and they remove it.”