Six EA and Codemasters games have suddenly been delisted from Steam, seemingly without any warning. Each of the games was unceremoniously taken from Valve’s storefront earlier this week, on the same day, making them much harder to purchase going forward. All of the games also have an update on SteamDB on Friday March 14 that reads “app_retired_publisher_request,” with very little else given.
While British videogame developer Codemasters is most well known for racing games like F1, Grid, and Dirt, the studio has been making and publishing games since the ‘80s. Then in 2021, Battlefield and FIFA maker EA purchased Codemasters, gaining access to the team’s library, From here, many of Codemasters old published games now also EA on their Steam pages.
Now, six of those games have suddenly been delisted on Steam. They are:
- Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
- Toybox Turbos
- Rise of the Argonauts
- Maelstrom: The Battle for Earth Begins
- Damnation
- Hospital Tycoon
Each of these games was delisted on Friday March 14 (as shown on SteamDB), with a message on Valve’s storefront saying they are “no longer available” for purchase. We’ve reached out to EA asking why these games have been delisted, and if they’ll ever return, and will update this story if/when we receive a response.
While Operation Flashpoint and Toybox Turbos were developed by Codemasters, the four other games on this list were made by different studios and published by the team instead. All six games were released prior to EA’s acquisition of the company, and have been available for purchase on Steam for some time.
All of the games are also on the GOG Dreamlist, where people can vote for games they’d like to be preserved on PC forever via the storefront’s Prevervation Program. This doesn’t confirm that they’ll be coming to GOG, but it does indicate that at least some players want to see these games preserved.
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