Two of the biggest PlayStation games have just been delisted on PC in UK
Worrying news has emerged regarding digital ownership, as while Sony continues to receive backlash for enforcing a discless future, two of its biggest first-party games have been delisted on PC in the UK for no apparent reason.
One user on the r/Steam subreddit managed to spot that Horizon Forbidden West and Helldivers 2 โ both first-party Sony games โ have mysteriously disappeared from Steam on PC in the United Kingdom, resulting in them being unavailable for purchase for the time being.
Looking at the SteamDB change history for both games you can see that Great Britain, United Kingdom, and Isle of Man have been added to the 'PurchaseRestrictedCountries' section, effectively resulting in their disappearance from the storefront.
They don't appear as an available result in searches on Steam, and attempting to navigate to their respective game pages on the web version simply leads you to an error page with the message: "This item is currently unavailable in your region."
Why have these games been delisted?
Users on Reddit quickly speculated that the motivation behind this measure could be to do with a technical issue, and a recent statement from Sony Interactive Entertainment to VGC has confirmed those suggestions.
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"We are aware of an issue affecting the availability of select titles on Steam in the UK," a spokesperson for the gaming giant illustrated. "We are working with Valve to address the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience."
There has, however, been no indication of a timeline for when the games will be available for purchase once again, with both titles still delisted at the current time of writing.
It's not necessarily the end of the world if you were just about to buy either game though, as both are still able to be purchased through other storefronts like the Epic Games Store, giving you an option despite the downtime.
Sony isn't the only company to be impacted by what appears to be a technical issue with Steam right now too, as Ubisoft's Watch Dogs: Legion has similarly been delisted in the UK without an explanation.
How does this feed into fears surrounding a digital-only future?
While this is merely a technical issue that will hopefully be fixed soon, it does once again remind people of the dangers surrounding a digital-only future for gaming, especially when it relates to the console space.
Games are unfortunately delisted all of the time, whether that be to do with expired licences or when servers are disabled for multiplayer titles, but even unintentional issues like this mean that there's no way for you to buy and play a game on PlayStation anymore.
While, as mentioned, gamers on PC can simply head to another storefront in order to pick the game up, the closed nature of digital console marketplaces โ which was subject to scrutiny in a recent class action lawsuit โ leaves players powerless when something like this happens.
With discs available you could simply go to a store or buy from the second-hand market if a game suddenly became unavailable in digital form, but when that soon is removed as an option there's the real threat that some of the biggest games releasing become lost or inaccesible.