After disappearing from Steam once in late 2016, Alice: Madness returned from US developer McGees Alice in February of this year, the first time it is been in existence for a little over five years, but now it’s removed again. Developer American McGee’s Alice games have a huge following, and the announcement that it is pulled off Steam again is upsetting.
A highly overlooked classic of platforming, the 2000 American McGee game Alice: Madness Returns features fast-paced battles and abstract puzzle-solving, all against the strange, dystopian backdrop of Lewis Carroll’s literary wonderland. As development on a film adaptation of American McGee’s Alice took longer, and the original game became a more iconic work, interest grew within Electronic Arts for a remake of the game in 2007, with work beginning on the sequel. Rumors about the Alice Liddell sequel were first developed soon after the release of the original game, which was critically and commercially successful, although by then, the development team behind the original was working on and eventually canceled spin-off, American McGee’s Oz.
The sequel was eventually featured on Steam but was removed from sale in 2016 when it was left under DRM (digital rights management, which controls the legal access to digital content) by Electronic Arts. The first game in the series was also available on Game Pass, but, like the sequel, was not available on Steam. It seems the delisting of Steam boils down to one simple error. The game has been removed from Steam with a post saying the removal was done on request by the publisher.
From what I've heard, in trying to remove Akaneiro from @Steam (it was broken), all the other Spicy Horse games also got removed. We're reaching out to Support and trying to get this resolved. Anyone at @valvesoftware can help fix this faster? https://t.co/D1h6SHn5P0
— ⚓ American McGee 🏴☠️ (@americanmcgee) June 18, 2022
While it is not known what is wrong yet, game director American McGee said before on Twitter it could be related to their other games. In fact years ago, the game’s director posted an entire history of the game to his Patreon, where people can pay a small sum of money to get access to all of the behind-the-scenes documents of the game. American McGee shared the documents as part of her efforts a mass-design effort for the third Alice adventure, along with 3,000+ fans supporting the Patreon at that time.
Publisher EA originally made the fantasy adventure available on Steam, however, they pulled it off of Steam in September 2016. Recently, fans were finally able to catch it on an unexpected return, however, Alice Madness Returns mysteriously disappeared after only three months. Alice returned to Steam just in February of 2022, having been discontinued for nearly five years because of DRM issues.
