The developer and publisher of the WWE 2K game franchise has delisted almost all of its Steam releases, with no explanation as to why.

After years of availability, video games being removed from digital gaming marketplaces is hardly new or surprising. Still, the latest delisting comes from 2K, the company that supports various sports games. Specifically, almost all of the old WWE 2K titles seem to have disappeared from Steam.

2K Sports, it’s worth noting, doesn’t appear to have announced the delisting of older WWE 2K titles. Instead, franchise fan and Reddit user Popstasia noticed this incident and took to social media to let people know what happened. Currently, only two officially licensed WWE games are left on Steam, and players who may have wanted to purchase an older edition of the series will be unable to do so.

WWE fans who might have been hoping to compare WWE 2K22 to previous instalments in the series may no longer be able to, according to Popstasia. Currently, it appears that 2K Sports has left only WWE 2K22 and WWE 2K Battlegrounds free to purchase after delisting all other previously available WWE 2K titles. Of course, players who previously owned the deleted entries will still have access to them: it’s just that it’s currently impossible for new players to purchase them through any official means.

While it may seem strange that even newer releases in the series like WWE 2K21 and WWE 2K20 are being removed, this situation is not unprecedented in the industry. Earlier this year, Bandai Namco delisted Fast and Furious: Crossroads after just a few months of wide availability. What makes it unprecedented is that 2K Sports didn’t issue a warning at all that this was going to happen, which also means that the company didn’t explain why it was deleting the mentioned titles.

However, the rationale is not entirely impossible to infer. Likely, 2K Sports’ licensing agreement for the previous games in the franchise has expired, and there’s no incentive for the publisher to renew them meaningfully. With WWE 2K23 coming soon, the company will likely focus more on its latest titles.

Deleting video games related to licenses can lead to some pretty unpleasant situations for everyone involved. For example, none of the widely acclaimed Forza Motorsport series is currently available for purchase in any shape, or form, after Forza Motorsport 7 was delisted in 2021. Instead, fans are forced to wait for the next entry in the series, and it looks like something similar is happening with WWE 2K.

Source: GameRant