Myth of Empires Removed from Steam

As of writing this, the newly released “Myth of Empires,” a Chinese survival game averaging almost 40,000 concurrent players as of earlier today is still removed from Steam.
And players are livid, with threads slowly building across various social platforms, amassing players to attack the company responsible. Which, as of yesterday, was supposedly confirmed to be Studio Wildcard, the company behind ARK: Survival Evolved.
According to Studio Wildcard, the developers have found “hundreds of matching class, variable, and function names in a preliminary analysis,” which they say confirms that the ARK source code was used in Myth of Empires.
Studio Wildcard presented all of this information to Steam in the form of a DMCA, which Steam is legally required to deal with, and subsequently – after approximately 48 hours went ahead and completely removed Myth of Empires from the store.

This means players can no longer purchase it. SteamDB and Steamcharts continue to list active players within the game, but if Angela Game, the dev team behind Myth of Empires cannot get this resolved soon, the game will likely lose quite a bit of its playerbase – both current and future.
To make matters worse, players have taken to social media to voice their displeasure with Angela Game and Myth of Empires in general, requesting that they receive refunds for the game.
Now I just want to take a moment here to state… the game has been out for almost a month now, with some of these players claiming they have hundreds of hours in it already… how is it at all fair to the developers to put them through even more, as opposed to merely waiting and seeing if they can get this sorted out first?
Angela Game made 2 separate blog posts to address this online. In the first post, they went on to state:

“A few days ago, Steam received allegations of suspected copyright infringement concerning Myth of Empires, and in accordance with the DMCA and to exempt itself from liability, has temporarily removed Myth of Empires from its store.
Our development team solemnly declares: Angela Game fully owns all rights and property associated with Myth of Empires and will actively respond to any doubts or allegations on this point.
We are in active contact with Steam and are doing our best to restore the game to their store. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused players.
At the same time, we will continue to improve the overall optimization of Myth of Empires as well as maintain normal operations and development work.
We are currently preparing a large number of content updates that cannot be brought online due to the current special circumstances, but players that have purchased Myth of Empires can rest assured that we are confident we will bring you a better gaming experience.”

Now while all we can do is speculate here, Steam will be able to discern whether or not Angela Game did in fact steal the source code for their game.
Requesting refunds at this time isn’t going to do anything but put additional stress on the developers – and until they’re proven guilty, that’s the last thing we want and they need.

2 days later, they went on to address the community in a follow-up post:

“Yesterday, after we informed you of the reason why Myth of Empires has been temporarily removed from the Steam platform and other related developments, rumors began to circulate among our communities about the identity of the company that filed the complaint to steam.
We need to affirm that these rumors are inconsistent with the parties actually involved in the delisting of Myth of Empires, but out of respect for the legal process, we are temporarily unable to disclose more details.
We hope that players will take a sensible stance on the issue and cease the excessive behaviors against rumored parties. Though we are frustrated with this situation as well, we still have faith that we will be able to resolve this situation in a timely matter and make the game available to everyone again.”

While they’re not legally capable of disclosing the name of the company that issued the DMCA request, once more, Studio Wildcard, the developers behind ARK are supposedly the ones responsible.
They’re attempting to dissuade their players – their community from acting out against Studio Wildcard, but gamers are an angry, vengeful lot.
We have players rallying behind Angela Game in support of the company because Myth of Empires is actually a very fun game that has been an incredible success thus far.
But we also have players spreading hate, rumors, creating drama, and wanting to request refunds already. Before they even have the chance to contest the DMCA.

This is absolutely crazy. I know Myth of Empires is direct competition for ARK, but honestly, so was Valheim, and Valheim now averages less than half of what ARK does daily, but this is next-level.
Now I don’t believe that Studio Wildcard would randomly attack another game, even if it’s direct competition like this – without a valid reason.

What do you guys think, though? Are players warranted in their anger at Angela Games, and warranted in their requests for a refund after a small hiccup like this? Or do you think they should wait it out first, especially given the fact that they were likely enjoying the game in the first place.
And, admittedly, this might all be a misunderstanding, who knows. At least I hope that’s the case, otherwise this is going to be a very, very large legal case.