Helldivers 2 and Horizon Forbidden West leave UK Steam

Helldivers 2 and Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition have vanished from Steam's UK storefront — and they are the only two Sony PC games affected.

Steam's own store data tells the story plainly. Both titles return a normal, purchasable listing for the United States, Germany, Ireland, France and Australia, and nothing at all for the United Kingdom. That is a UK-only gap rather than a global withdrawal, and it is specific to these two games.

Is this a Sony blackout in Britain?

No. A dozen other Sony-published PC releases were checked against the same UK store data and every one of them is still on sale, including God of War, God of War Ragnarok, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us Part I, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut, Days Gone and Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Whatever has happened here has been applied title by title.

So why would a game disappear in one country?

Storefronts are effectively separate shops in every territory, and a publisher can pull a game from one country without touching the others. The usual causes are contractual and deeply unglamorous: a local age-rating classification lapsing or being refused, a marketing or distribution rights deal running out, a disagreement over local consumer or refund rules, or simple human error somewhere in the chain.

None of that is confirmed here, and it may not be any of it. As of writing there is no public explanation from Sony or Valve for either removal, which leaves UK shoppers refreshing a store page and guessing at the cause. Treat any confident answer you read elsewhere as speculation until one of the two companies says otherwise.

Why does the *Helldivers 2* one sting the most?

Helldivers 2 is one of Sony's biggest PC successes: a live-service shooter that keeps its player count up by selling to newcomers long after launch, and its next warbond, Ironclad Democracy, is due on 22 September. Losing the ability to buy the base game in a major market days before a content drop is a poor look, particularly for a game whose entire pitch is that fresh recruits keep joining the fight.

Our opinion

Sony has spent five years telling PC players it takes the platform seriously, and every so often something like this happens and the message lands very differently. The frustrating part is not the removal itself — publishers pull games for boring legal reasons all the time. It is the silence. One line on the store page, the PlayStation Blog or the game's own channels would end the guesswork in seconds and cost nothing.

Instead, UK players are left to work out whether a favourite game has been killed off locally, is coming back next week, or simply fell through a gap. That is how you teach an audience to stop trusting your storefront, and it sits badly with a company that would very much like those same players to buy into a PlayStation account, a launcher and whatever handheld comes next. Explain the removals or put the listings back — today, not after the warbond.