Platinum's Turtles title removed from Steam

A few days ago, a number of Codemasters' racing games were quietly removed from Steam: Grid, Dirt 3, and F1 2013. Now, Platinum Games' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan has been silently whisked away, as have its 2013 predecessor TMNT: Out of the Shadows, along with The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel (all four games were published by Activision). What's going on? A stealthy game-napper pinching digital titles in the night; a rogue hacker causing mischief?

In the Curious Case of Codemasters, it's most likely licensing issues—as in, licenses running out—and I can only assume that's the reason here too. However, as Platinum's Turtles game has only been out for around eight months, it seems odd that Activision would pull it quite so early.

If you already own the delisted games, you can still play them, but as no boxed copies of the four Activision titles appear to have been released for PC, it seems you can no longer purchase PC versions of the two Turtles games or the Amazing Spider-Men. (Thanks, NeoGAF.)

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.