Alice: Madness Returns has been taken off Steam again

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After being relisted less than four months ago.

Alice lies in bed
(Image credit: EA)

Alice: Madness Returns, the sequel to American McGee's Alice, hasn't had a great time of it on Steam. After being delisted in late 2016 due to problems with the DRM publisher Electronic Arts saddled it with, Madness Returns returned in late February this year. It managed to stay on Steam for less than four months before being removed again. As the boilerplate text on its Steam page currently says, "At the request of the publisher, Alice: Madness Returns is no longer available for sale on Steam."

While fans have been quick to blame EA again, this time it may be the result of a simple mistake. As American McGee has suggested on Twitter, the issue could be down to a problem with another game by developer Spicy Horse: action-RPG Akaneiro: Demon Hunters.

Akaneiro, which we described as "one part Little Red Riding Hood, one part Japanese mythos and five parts 'under construction' tape" had become unplayable—first due to a login problem that could only be circumvented by what one of its developers called an "Ugly hack" shared on the Steam forum, then by the servers going down. 

McGee suggests that, while delisting the broken Akaneiro, Spicy Horse's other game may have accidentally been caught in the same net. "We're reaching out to Support and trying to get this resolved", McGee wrote. If that's the case, hopefully it can be restored soon. In the meantime, Alice: Madness Returns remains available on Origin, and on Game Pass via EA Play. 

Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.