EA Quietly Removes 6 Codemasters Games from Steam!

by

Summary

  • EA has quietly removed six Codemasters games from Steam.
  • The affected games include Damnation, Toybox Turbos, Hospital Tycoon, Operation Flashpoint: Rising Dragon, and more.
  • No official statement has been provided by EA or Codemasters yet, with many gamers expressing concerns about the publisher’s handling of older game licenses.

Six EA and Codemasters games have been quietly pulled from Steam without any prior notice, expectedly leaving several players confused. All of these games were originally developed and/or published by Codemasters, but were folded into the EA label a few years ago.

As one of the oldest British game studios, Codemasters made its name with racing franchises like Grid and Dirt, as well as licensed titles like the F1 games. In 2021, EA acquired Codemasters and gained control over the developer’s extensive back-catalog. Unfortunately, the publisher seems to be behind the recent removal of some old Codemasters games from prominent PC gaming storefront Steam.

With several EA games already having been shut down and made unavailable for purchase in recent months, it appears six Codemasters titles have also joined the list, namely Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Toybox Turbos, Rise of the Argonauts, Maelstrom: The Battle for Earth Begins, Damnation, and Hospital Tycoon. According to SteamDB, each of these games was marked with an “app_retired_publisher_request” update on Friday, March 14, suggesting that EA itself requested the removals. Notably, while Operation Flashpoint and Toybox Turbos were developed by Codemasters, the remaining four were only published by the studio.

Every EA Codemasters Game Delisted from Steam in March 2025

  • Damnation
  • Hospital Tycoon
  • Maelstrom: The Battle for Earth Begins
  • Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
  • Rise of the Argonauts
  • Toybox Turbos

Since all six games were released before EA’s acquisition of Codemasters, their removal from Steam has raised some concerns about how the publisher is handling older game licenses under its control. At the time of writing, neither EA nor Codemasters have provided an official statement explaining why these games were taken down, or whether they might return to Steam in the future. Adding to the uncertainty, these titles are currently listed on GOG’s Dreamlist, a community-driven wishlist where players can vote for older games they’d like to see preserved on PC.

While their inclusion on the Dreamlist doesn’t guarantee that the games will make their way to GOG, it does indicate that there’s at least some demand for them to remain accessible. Digital storefront removals have become increasingly common in recent years, even across major gaming platforms like Xbox and PlayStation, often as a result of expired licensing agreements, low sales, or corporate decisions to focus on newer releases. Thankfully, GOG has been picking up the game preservation slack on PC by providing DRM-free executables for over 100 games, which essentially grant full ownership to buyers, instead of just a license.

Read More

2025-03-16 22:38