Agony, a hammy survival horror game about a soul trying to escape Hell by finding someone called “the Red Goddess”, was released by Madmind Studios in 2018. An adults only version called Agony Unrated followed after some uncertainty and confusion—Agony Unrated was first canceled “Due to technical and legal reasons”, then mysteriously appeared on Steam anyway.
In an odd reversal of its appearance, Agony Unrated has vanished from the Steam libraries of players who received it for free as a bonus for owning the original game. Madmind Studio posted a blog explaining that the two games “were delinked by Steam.”
“As most of you know,” the post went on, “until now, if you bought Agony you also received a copy of Agony UNRATED in your library. This was always our intended way to do this and that didn’t change. As some of you are also aware, games with themes similar to ours can often face some difficulties on this platform.
“Unfortunately, we still don’t have full knowledge on why they were delinked and we’re unable to link the games again using our own tools, so we’re now in contact with Steam support to work out the solution that’ll satisfy everyone.”
A look at the history of the package containing both games on SteamDB shows that Agony Unrated was removed from it on February 16. Agony Unrated remains available as a separate purchase on Steam, and players who obtained it that way still have access to their copies.
On February 23, Madmind explained it had put together bundles for Agony owners that would discount Agony Unrated to the maximum amount possible in each region, which is anywhere between 65% and 95% off. Obviously, that’s not the same as free.
As the developer says, “this is a temporary solution and the only one available to us using our tools. We are, however, contacting Steam and GOG as well to ask for a significant number of free keys for Agony UNRATED (for those who are unaware, devs can’t generate a big number of keys without giving the platform owner a good reason to do so). If they provide us with those, we’ll set up a system where Agony owners will be able to claim their lost copy of the game.”
Regarding the question of why Steam chose to delink Agony Unrated in the first place, Madmind said it still doesn’t have an answer. “The reason that led to this situation is probably (that’s our guess) because some players who intentionally bought the game in the censored version also got access to the uncensored version, which they did not want. (There is also a different age rating for both games).
“Accordingly, the two games can no longer be linked together and we were asked to remove any posts & announcements that linked to adult-only versions of our games, which you might’ve noticed as some of the pinned threads have disappeared. We had no choice in the matter as not complying with Steam’s demands could lead to a removal of all our games from the platform.”