Yesterday, Helldivers 2 and Horizon Forbidden West mysteriously disappeared from the Steam store in the UK. There was no announcement about this move, nor any indication it would happen before players began noticing that neither game was listed on the digital storefront. Users that did not own the games were left unable to purchase them, however people that already had the Sony Interactive Entertainment-published titles in their libraries were still able to boot and play the games.
“An error was encountered while processing your request: This item is currently unavailable in your region,” read a message when users clicked on the greyed-out storefront listings
Initially, there was a suspicion that this was an intentional move – Sony has, after all, been making noises about moving away from publishing its titles on PC over the course of this year. However, it seems this delisting snafu is a complete accident, per a new statement from Sony itself.
“We are aware of an issue affecting the availability of select titles on Steam in the UK,” Sony told VGC. “We are working with Valve to address the issue. We apologise for the inconvenience.” So, it seems they’ll likely be back to normal soon.
It’s a fairly peculair turn of events: was Sony adjusting something in the backend that caused these games to be delisted? Is this an indicator of changes to come that may have been actioned early? It’s a strange situation, but at least for now it seems the UK (and Isle of Man) are going to be able to get both Helldivers 2 and Horizon Forbidden West available on Steam again.
Given the conversation around PlayStation games on PC – with PlayStation exec Hermen Hulst, for example, confirming the company’s narrative single-player games will now be exclusive to PS5 going forward – it’s hard not to view this development with a little suspicion.