I was watching the Sleeping Dogs QL and Vinny mentioned Driver San Francisco. It got me wondering about how much it was on the Steam Winter Sale. Oddly, it seems to have been pulled. I go and check Uplay, Origin, and Humble store. Nada, gone.

It's a strange game I never got to play and now I'm wondering wtf happened.

First of all, Amazon.com has it for $20 digital download

That's probably a pre-generated key, though, which is why they can still sell it (I'd guess.) Disc based copy is even cheaper there, though I don't know what service it goes through or whether that would still work. Should be able to get a refund if it doesn't, though, Amazon is pretty good about that.

There are basically 3 reasons why a game gets pulled from digital shelves:

1) Company goes bankrupt or otherwise dissolves, creating confusion as to who owns the rights to the game. (Of course many companies go bankrupt and see their IP bought, in which case, if there's a clear line of succession, the game will often stay available.)

2) Game is so terrible or offensive that having it available for sale is a PR risk for its rights holder.

3) Some kind of licensing issue.

Given that Driver: San Francisco was made by Ubisoft, which is still around, and it's both a good game and a relatively inoffensive one, it seems pretty likely that the answer is 3, there was some kind of license that was only good for a limited period of time and was not renewed.

My memory of the game (which I liked a lot) is that it had both licensed music and licensed cars. That combination makes it very likely that at least some of those licenses were for a limited period, and when that period expired Ubisoft pulled the game, which probably wasn't a huge back catalog seller that would have made it worthwhile to renew the licenses.

Yeah, I was thinking licensed soundtrack. It doesn't make financial sense for Ubisoft to renegotiate if their anticipated sales don't exceed what they need.

@bigsocrates: ah, didn't know it had licensed vehicles. that's a shame. music could easily be fixed but cars are a bit much. same thing happened to the original Dirt. : /