A number of Rockstar Games titles were accidentally pulled from Steam, leading to the temporary re-listing of classic racing game Midnight Club 2.
As noted on SteamDB (via PC Gamer), a number of Rockstar games, including GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, and LA Noire, were "retired" from Steam last night, meaning that users were no longer able to purchase them. After a brief period of confusion, however, all of the games were returned to the platform with no apparent changes, and PC Gamer reports that the companies involved have confirmed that the change was accidental.
That wasn't the only accident, however, as players noticed that Midnight Club 2, a cult street racing game released in 2003 but delisted from Steam in 2018, possibly as a result of issues pertaining to soundtrack copyrighting, was re-listed onto the platform for a brief period. It was swiftly taken back down, but not before a few players were able to grab it, spiking the game's concurrent player count to its highest figure since 2017.
While the mistake appears to have been resolved without issue, if this had been an intentional move, it wouldn't be the first time that some of Rockstar's high-profile efforts have disappeared from PC storefronts. In January 2020, the studio said it was forced to remove GTA 4 from Steam as a result of the closure of Games for Windows Live.
While Rockstar's back catalog might have temporarily disappeared, that doesn't mean that the company is abandoning its older games. In fact, new updates for both L.A. Noire and Max Payne 3 have added all of those games' DLC to the base games at no extra cost.
Those reinstated games should help pass some of the time until we learn more about GTA 6.
