Wreckfest 2 doesn’t yet have a release date, but you can find more details on and .

Wreckfest 2 doesn’t yet have a release date, but you can find more details on and .

The first Wreckfest was notable back in 2018 because it’s from the developers of the also-beloved also-car-smashing FlatOut series. It did pretty well for itself because of its robust physics simulation combined with its relatively serious tone, which the says is because it was—and still is—”unlike anything else in the genre.”

This is the first and only example—at least I hope—but worth noting to round out the list. As a general rule: don’t ever threaten to kill anyone, ever. And not just because it may get your game removed from Steam. Because, like, it’s a criminal act and a horrible thing to do.

The developer threatened to kill Gabe Newell

The first Early Access game I ever bought was Under The Ocean, a survival game, way back in 2012. I know Early Access is a gamble, but I enjoyed the game and was willing to be patient as it slowly wound its way through development. Until, eventually, it simply didn’t. Issues arose between members of the team, the money ran out, and in 2015.

The game wasn’t finished

“If you look at the reviews, it wasn’t that the game was broken or buggy, people just didn’t like it,” Escalante said. Fair enough.

(Image credit: Versus Evil)Lots of games aren’t good, but they usually stick around anyway. Not all, however. by its makers, and future episodes canceled, because “The game was a failure,” according to general manager of developer Versus Evil Steve Escalante.

The game isn’t good

Another developer, the creator of Active Shooter, . “Ata is a troll, with a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation,” a Valve rep said. “His subsequent return under new business names was a fact that came to light as we investigated the controversy around his upcoming title. We are not going to do business with people who act like this towards our customers or Valve.”

In September of 2017, , all from the same single developer. These games, with names like Shapes4, Shapes5, Shapes6, and yes, Shapes7, appeared to simply have been created in order to mine Steam trading cards for profit. “They generate many thousands of [Steam] keys and hand them out to bots running Steam accounts, which then idle away in their games to collect Trading Cards.” A clever ruse, but one Valve is now wise to.

They’re scams

Five Nights at Freddy’s World creator Scott Cawthon as well, stating he wasn’t satisfied with the ratings and reviews it was receiving and apologizing for its state at the time of release. He even offered refunds to Steam users, no matter when it had been purchased or for how long it had been played.

Batman: Arkham Knight is maybe the most well-known example: after launching on PC, the port was widely criticized by players due to performance issues, after which . It was, to put it lightly, a big shock and at the time pretty much unprecedented for such a major release.

Technical problems

This is almost true of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The original version of Skyrim won’t come up in a search of Steam, just the other versions (VR, Special Edition, Anniversary Upgrade, and Anniversary Edition). It is, however, . It appears Bethesda is just hiding it, hoping newcomers will buy the newer versions instead.

Similarly, when Rockstar released the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition, it was , and it didn’t help that the original games were delisted when .

(Image credit: Rockstar Games)was removed from sale in May 2018, when Dark Souls: Remastered Edition arrived. As with a few other examples above, this doesn’t mean it vanishes from your Steam library if you own it, but you can no longer purchase it. Multiplayer for this version of Dark Souls is also dead for good.

It’s been replaced by a remastered version

House Party isn’t the only game targeted with complaints about ‘pornography’—several anime-style games, such as those made by developer HuniePot and the visual novel Mutiny!! . The warning came with deadlines to alter or censor their games, or face being taken off Steam. The tricky thing is that these guidelines , and it’s not clear why these specific games are the subject of complaints while others that feature sex or nudity aren’t. HuniePot released a censored version of its game on Steam to comply with the warning.

House Party, an Early Access game from 2017, quickly rose to popularity . That was due to complaints of ‘pornography’ in the game being sent to Valve, though that’s as vague and hard to define as the term ‘sexual content.’ House Party returned a few days later having added a ‘censor bar’ to certain scenes, though cleverly if they wanted the game to remain uncensored.

It contained ‘sexual content’

Something similar happened in the same year when publisher Insel Games of its game Wild Buster. When Valve got wind of it, they pulled the game from Steam. Meanwhile, Acram’s games have since returned to Steam, but Wild Buster has not.

(Image credit: Acram Digital)Reviews causing a stir is nothing new, but it’s entirely another matter when a developer tries to boost its Steam review score and word of mouth with fake reviews for its own game. We’ve seen it a few times now: by Valve in 2018 after it came to light that a staff member of Acram had been posting positive reviews of their game using different Steam accounts.

Because of fake reviews

This isn’t unique to gaming—we’ve seen it happen to TV shows like The Wonder Years and WKRP in Cincinati, which can’t be re-broadcast or sold once the rights to the music used on the shows have expired. The music either has to be removed from the show and replaced with something else, or new deals with license holders for each song need to be made. Years after a show or game has wrapped production, it’s extremely difficult for either of those things to happen. Happily, in the case of Alan Wake, and get the game back on sale with all of its original soundtrack intact.

You can buy Alan Wake on Steam—but for a while, . The reason had to do with music. It’s common for a game developer to pay for the rights to songs for a certain period of time—seven years, in the case of Alan Wake—and when that time expires, the game can no longer be sold if it still contains those songs. Grid, Dirt 3, F1 2013, Tony Hawk Hawk Pro Skater HD, and numerous other games have vanished from Steam and other digital marketplaces due to music licenses expiring.

Music rights expired

Stardock, maker of Star Control: Origins, was issued a DMCA notice from the makers of the original MS-DOS game Star Control during a over the copyrights and trademarks of the series. As a result, Origins was removed from Steam. Happily, it after several weeks, and in June of 2019.

A DMCA notice was issued

Red Candles, the developer of Taiwanese horror game , included a reference to this Winnie the Pooh meme and other assorted commentary on China, which led to , as well as another game by Red Candles, Detention. Red Candles apologized and removed the Pooh reference, but it didn’t end there. The developer’s ties to its publishing partners were severed and .

Censors in China have banned Winnie the Pooh due to memes that used pictures of the fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear to make fun of Chinese president Xi Jinping. Yeah, this is a real thing that happened because the world we live in is ridiculous.

It contained a Winnie the Pooh reference

Metro Exodus is the most notable example, as it took preorders for months on Steam before going exclusive on Epic just weeks before its launch. Pre-purchases on Steam were halted, and Exodus wouldn’t return to the Steam store until 2020 when its one-year exclusive deal with Epic expired.

The Epic Games Store arrived with quite a splash in 2018, luring developers to its marketplace with a better revenue cut than Valve offers, . It doesn’t hurt that millions already use Epic’s launcher to play Fortnite, either. As a result, a number of developers and publishers agreed to exclusive launches on the Epic Store.

An exclusive deal was made with Epic Games

This obviously isn’t just a problem for Steam users but people who bought the game elsewhere, too. At any rate, Tron: Evolution has been delisted from Steam. Hopefully, Disney will eventually release a DRM-free version to the admittedly few people who still want to play a nine-year-old game . But frankly, it doesn’t matter how few people play it or how bad the game is. If you buy a game, you should be able to play it forever.

(Image credit: Disney Interactive)The peril of DRM can raise its ugly head years down the road. A good example is Tron: Evolution, which became unplayable in 2019 because its publisher, Disney Interactive, . With the DRM service inactive for Tron: Evolution, the game has become a lock with chewing gum stuck in it. Players currently aren’t able to verify their serial key, so the game simply won’t launch.

Disney stops paying for SecuROM DRM

A statement from Valve read: “We recently discovered a handful of partners that were abusing some Steamworks tools. We emailed all the affected partners.” That’s not all that much of an explanation, but we hope to someday learn a bit more about what really happened. Meanwhile, some of the removed games have reappeared on Steam (at least one with a new publisher), while others are still gone for good.

(Image credit: Zykov Eddy, Xitilon)In November 2019 . Many of them appeared to be what I’d describe as ‘extremely indie’—games few had ever heard of or played (at least judging by the number of Steam reviews). Some, however, had been on Steam for years and had hundreds of positive reviews at the time they vanished, so this mass removal didn’t appear to be one of Valve’s purges of asset-flips or scams.

Publishers were “abusing” Steamworks tools

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware dealsKeep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

The dev’s co-founder told us he went back to the game after eight years to address some “glaring” issues, but had no way to fix them. “At the time of Quantum Lock’s development, we had no established routine to back up our data, aside from placing stuff onto a portable hard drive,” he said to PC Gamer in an email. That drive is now lost, so the game can’t be updated. On the plus side, the studio now backs up the code for its other games on a local server and in two additional locations, so it won’t happen again.

(Image credit: Fat Bomb Studios)Here’s the weird and sad reason 2015’s was delisted from Steam in 2024. “QL was our first game and although it was a big milestone for us, it was created at a time before we understood version control software,” developer Fat Bomb Studios said. “We do not have access to the source code anymore and cannot make any fixes or changes to the game. Because of this, we have decided to disable the ability for anyone to buy copies of the game.”

The developer does not “have access to the source code anymore”

This turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg for The Day Before. It returned to Steam and launched in December of 2023 to scathing reviews, and less than a week later Fntastic closed its doors. Servers were shut down within a month, and the game is now truly gone. You can read the whole saga of .

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware dealsKeep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Neither Studio Wildcard nor its co-developer Grove Street Games has said anything about the project since it missed its original 2023 release date. If Ark 2 is real and still coming out this year, it’s going to be one of the weirdest surprise drops we’ve had in a while.

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware dealsKeep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.