Six Games from Electronic Arts and Codemasters Removed from Steam Without Warning
Six games that were published by Codemasters and are now owned by Electronic Arts have been removed from Steam (thanks PCGamesN) without any prior notice or explanation. These games are quite old, with some dating back to 2007, making them harder to find on PC now.
The removed games are:
- Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
- Toybox Turbos
- Rise of the Argonauts
- Maelstrom: The Battle for Earth Begins
- Damnation
- Hospital Tycoon
No Official Communication So Far
Out of the six games listed, only two were developed directly by Codemasters: Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and Toybox Turbos. The others were created by third parties, with Codemasters acting as the publisher. Electronic Arts took over the publishing rights in 2021 when it acquired Codemasters.
According to SteamDB’s history, all six games were removed on March 14 with the message “app_retired_publisher_request” (“application retired at the request of the publisher”). On their Steam pages, it simply says, “Game X is no longer available on the Steam Store.”
Preserving Video Games
As mentioned earlier, there was no advance notice or explanation provided regarding the removal of these games from Steam. This situation has sparked more discussions about the preservation of video games, and to address this, all six titles have been added by the community to GOG’s Dreamlist. This is a program on the GOG platform where users can vote for old games they’d like to see return to stores to help preserve them for the future.
