UPDATE 06/30/20: After approximately one week, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition returned to sale on PlayStation 4 today in all affected regions. It’s unclear if any of the licensed content we mentioned previously has been altered, but the game is once again available. We made a quick check on PC and Xbox, and the game remains available on those platforms as well.
PSNProfiles forum members noticed last week that Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, the 2014 repackaging of the previous year’s Tomb Raider reboot, had disappeared from the PlayStation Store. Digging into it this weekend, here’s a quick recap of where this peculiar situation stands.
So far, only the PlayStation 4 versions of the game have been delisted, and it’s only been removed from Western regions (Australia, Europe, North America). It is currently only available on PlayStation 4 in Asian territories including Hong Kong and Japan but it’s still out there worldwide on Xbox One. Equally odd is that neither the original PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 versions have gone away.
So what gives? The best I can figure is that the Definitive Edition releases included some extra content that may have had separate licensing terms. From Square’s own product description, that includes the “digital versions of the Dark Horse comic, Brady Games mini-art book and the Final Hours developer videos (from Geoff Keighley and Spike TV)”.
It’s possible we’re in the middle of a rolling delisting and that the Xbox One versions as well as the Asian releases on PlayStation 4 will disappear once their regional content teams get up to speed. However, it’s also possible that Square Enix is working to restore the Definitive Editions with a renewed license from all parties involved. Ironically, it’s equally possible they’ll come back without the bonus content, making them decidedly less definitive packages.
I’ll keep checking the store pages this coming week to see if anything changes and get the game on the site after that. Thanks to @Dinahfan1Luid77 for linking to PSNProfiles’ discussion and pointing out this curious situation.