The Games Come In, The Games Go Out

The other day, we discussed how Steam added 19,000 games to its
library. But on the flip-side, there were also close to 1,000 games*
/removed/ from the Steam storefront in 2024 as well.

This includes 36 games completely delisted (removed from the
storefront entirely, as if they never existed), and 587 removed from
sale (store page exists, but no option to purchase or otherwise add to
library). If you don't own the games on Steam in either category,
there's no chance of getting them now. And since Steam is the dominant
distributor of PC video games, that means a lot of those games are
gone forever.

    [The 300 or so remaining games are mostly free games -or
     freeware versions of paid games-- where the free option is
     no longer available, with a handful of test or unreleased
     games making the deficit]

Now, in truth, the vast bulk of these vanished games are titles that
nobody has ever heard of. Only 41 of the 587 'removed from sale' games
were owned by more than 10% of Steam users (360 of those games were
owned by less than 1% of Steam users). But there are some notable
titles gone

     [Including: Crazy Tactics, Spec Ops: The Line, Forza
      Horizon 4, the entire 3rd season of Sam & Max( 5 games),
      Beyond Good & Evil, Doom II, the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis
      Collection, Devil May Cry 3 SE, Grand theft Auto,
      NBA2K15, and many more]


1000 games gone, and that's on Steam alone. The number goes higher if
you include GOG, Epic, Sony Playstation, Microsoft's Marketplace, etc.

Whether you personally liked these games or not, they were games that
were popular and were removed not because they stopped being good and
worth playing, but for financial reasons that have little to do with
whether people wanted to play them or not. Now, if you want to acquire
them, the only option is to hoist the skull'n'bones. There's a reason
people are worried about game preservation. Stupid and awful as many
of these games may be, they are part of our common heritage and while
it is perfectly legal for these titles to be removed from storefronts,
the morality of it is a lot less certain.

And people wonder why I grab as many games into my library as I do.
You never know when they'll be gone for good otherwise.







* 995 games in total. Information pulled from
https://steam-tracker.com/