Uncharted Waters Origin disappears from Steam after only 11 days on sale [UPDATE: It’s Back]

[UPDATE 03/21/23] As expected Uncharted Waters Origin returned to the Steam store early this week, on Monday afternoon in fact. The free-to-play title is once again available on the popular PC platform but already emblazoned with a ‘Mostly Negative’ reception. Our original post from March 19th continues below.

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Koei Tecmo and LINE Games Co. find themselves in a sticky situation that I don’t think any other publisher has ever run into on Steam. Their recent release of Uncharted Waters Origin just hit the Steam store two weeks ago and now suddenly finds itself delisted with the creators claiming that it’s an “issue with the install button”.

Hello, Admirals. We have confirmed that there is an issue where the install button is currently not showing on Steam. We are currently looking into the issue and will work to resolve it as quickly as we can.

Current Situation
* This issue is only appearing for new installations of the game.
* Admirals who already own the game in their Library or have it installed can access and play the game normally.

How to Still Play the Game
* You can play Uncharted Waters Origin through FLOOR, as well as Steam.
* Please play the game through FLOOR until the issue is resolved.
* You can connect to Steam after playing through FLOOR. Please see the notices linked below for more details.

ㄴ EN: https://uwo.floor.line.games/us/bbsCmn/detail/1678176179486030242
ㄴ JP: https://uwo.floor.line.games/jp/bbsCmn/detail/1678175815170002472
ㄴ TW: https://uwo.floor.line.games/tw/bbsCmn/detail/1678175955426002592

We apologize for the inconvenience caused and will work to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thank you.

Steam Announcement – March 17, 2023

I am not one to jump to outlandish accusations but it’s hard to ignore some of the comments that imply they purposefully pulled the game from sale as its user review score teetered in the 20%-30% range. With the game off of sale its recent and all-time review metrics conveniently disappear from its store page while the announcement directs interested players to their dedicated PC launcher.

For what it’s worth, the game has seen a lot of “emergency maintenance” and “known issue” announcements in just the last two weeks so it doesn’t seem completely impossible that the missing install button isn’t an extremely rare bug. We’ll be back with more on this one as news develops. Thanks to @Kaizuken for pointing out the news on this one.