Just a couple days after Alice: Madness Returns disappeared without warning (opens in new tab) from Steam, it’s back on the storefront, and it turns out that—as expected—the whole thing was a big mistake.
It’s been a wild ride for American McGee’s twisted take on Alice in Wonderland. It was delisted from Steam in 2016, apparently thanks to some verification problems with publisher Electronic Arts. It returned earlier this year but last week went poof yet again, this time with no notice or explanation.
Even American McGee, founder of developer Spicy Horse (and whose name adorns Madness Returns’ predecessor) wasn’t sure what happened, although he speculated that somebody, somewhere, had likely just pushed the wrong button.
As it turns out, he was correct. “One of our team mistakenly instructed Support to ‘shut down everything’ when the topic was ‘Akaneiro’—wrongly thinking other games (like A:MR) had been moved to a Mysterious Inc account,” McGee tweeted. “Yikes.”
This snafu made the news. Hope @valvesoftware can help. One of our team mistakenly instructed Support to “shut down everything” when the topic was “Akaneiro” – wrongly thinking other games (like A:MR) had been moved to a Mysterious Inc account. Yikes.https://t.co/G0UBrdOYp2June 20, 2022
Mysterious Inc (opens in new tab). is McGee’s current “business headquarters,” which offers products like books, art, and other merchandise for sale. Spicy Horse closed its doors (opens in new tab) in 2016.
While Madness Returns is returned, American McGee’s Alice is still not available on Steam (although it wasn’t available there in the first place), and unfortunately McGee doesn’t know (opens in new tab) where to get it these days. Grimm (opens in new tab) is still listed, but it’s no longer being offered for sale; it’s not clear whether that’s connected to the Akaneiro accident, but it is a relatively recent change, as the Wayback Machine (opens in new tab) indicates that Grimm was available for purchase as recently as April 7. (It ‘s still available for purchase on GOG (opens in new tab).) Akaneiro: Demon Hunters (opens in new tab), the game that started this whole thing (and which I actually rather liked in its pre-release days) is also still listed on Steam but not actually available to buy.