When we reported on the Rocket Riot 3D (Win 8) delisting just yesterday, the comments that followed in the thread made it perfectly clear that it wasn't just an isolated title. Apparently, there were quite a few more, so we decided to do some digging. The result revealed a further six Windows 8 titles that have been removed from the Games Store:
Field & Stream Fishing (Win 8)
Glacier Blast (Win 8)
Gunpowder (Win 8)
Royal Envoy 2 Special Edition (Win 8)
The Harvest (Win 8)
Zombies!!! (Win 8)
For the vast majority of these titles, we don't know when they were removed from the Games Store, nor do we know why. However, developer Babaroga has since republished Zombies!!! as a non-LIVE-enabled title called Zombies!!! ® Board Game. The previously mentioned Rocket Riot 3D will also be republished as a non-LIVE title. In case you missed it yesterday, here is CodeGlue's co-founder Peter de Jong's statement on the subject:
We will bring back Rocket Riot to Windows Phone and Windows 8. However, we will be doing the publishing ourselves from now on instead of Microsoft Studios. Microsoft Studios has been great for us, but it is time for us to try publishing ourselves. :) That said we wanted to be ready when Microsoft took down the games, but we ran into a few technical issues. Hence the delay.
There will be a few drastic (unfortunate) changes too with this transfer:
1. It will be a new game from the perspective of the Store. So if you already have the game, future updates will not be linked. So basically you have to re-buy the game. However we are looking into doing a launch first where the game is free for the first few weeks.
2. Not sure if I can mention this here, but the new version will not have LIVE functionality (you can start throwing rocks now). We will have a similar system in place, but not the LIVE system.
We are very sorry for this.
I just wanted to give you guys this update, so that you know what is going on and what to expect the next couple of weeks. We are aware we going to disappoint gamers but we also hope to make a lot gamers happy with future features we are going to implement. We are now way more flexible in doing so.
Thanks to the members of the community who alerted us to these delistings!