Wordpress Steem 1.0 Beta Line 40 Problem Fix

I had an issue trying to install this. I don't know if it was because of the version of PHP that my server is running or the version of Wordpress. But I would get this error

Fatal error: Can't use function return value in write context in /wp-content/plugins/wp-steem/app/wp-steem-functions.php on line 40

To fix, I changed the function wp_steem_is_setup() to the following:

function wp_steem_is_setup () {

     return true;
}

I understand that this defeats the purpose of the function because it checks if Steem has been setup, but for my purposes it fixed the error and allowed the plugin to work.