“There’s an old saying in Chinese. People will not give you fire when you are cold. But when you are cosy and when you are flourishing, people tend to give you all the luxury stuff.”
Ningkun Dai is recalling the “darkest moment” of Leap Studio, where he is founder and CEO. When his debut game,Realm of Ink, was delisted on Steam, he thought he’d lost everything. He’d certainly lost his only source of income, but he was adamant not to let over three years of work go to waste.
What Happens When Steam Delists You Without Warning?
Realm of Ink is a Hades-like roguelite with design inspiration taken from Chinese mythology. It looks gorgeous, and its early access release in September 2024 was a great success. The game boasted a healthy number of players, great Steam reviews, and passionate communities on bothDiscordand Chinese alternative QQ. But it was on the latter platform that Dai learned of his game’s fate in January this year.
“I have a habit that every day [when] I wake up, I check my QQ, the Chinese community. They told me, ‘dude, I cannot find your Steam page. What the f*ck happened?’ I was like, what?”
Due to theGreat Firewall of China, Dai can only check the Steam page from his office. Once there, he realised his game was gone, with not so much as a notification from store operatorValve.
“Surprisingly, I didn’t feel that much when I found out,” he says. “It was blank. Seriously, it was blank.”
“When we were taken down, I was thinking about everybody in the studio. It’s because I know how committed they are to the game.”
At the exact same moment, the same thing happened to Xiong Tang, who likes to be referred to as Black. He was in a similar position to Dai; a young Chinese game developer who started his own independent studio.
Shadowlight was working onKill the Shadow, which had just released a successful demo during Steam Next Fest. I praised it myself inmy roundup of the festival, thanks to its 2.5D art style and intriguing paranormal premise. It had been nominated for many awards in China at the time it disappeared without a trace.
“At first, everyone was super shocked because they [hadn’t done] anything,” he tells me over video call, via translator Jin Wang, who is the investment director at Shadowlight’s new investor Hypergryph. “But after everyone calmed down, we started to reach out to anyone that might be able to offer help, advice, or a solution, including the publisher, including other developers who faced similar situations.”
The Impact On Developers
Both games had one more thing in common: their publisher. As it turns out, every game published by 663 Games was delisted from Steam on the same day. Half a dozen indie developers’ hopes and dreams shattered without reason. 663 Games did not respond to a request for comment from TheGamer.
Other games that were delisted include Aztecs The Last Sun, The Book of Warriors, Lotus Lantern: Rescue Mother, and Return.
But Dai and Black weren’t going to let this break them. They’d poured their hearts, souls, and significant sums of cash into their games, and both studios ploughed on with their work as teams tried to make contact with Valve in order to relist their games on Steam. But that wasn’t going to be easy.
“We were very underpaid,” Dai tells me. “For artists, their salary is under £800 per month – the minimum to sustain their lives. I needed to mortgage my house for all the spending. Also, our executive producer, his family doesn’t live here. We live in Beijing right now. His wife supported him at first, but after almost three years of developing, because they cannot see each other, the long-distance relationship… So [their marriage] finally came to an end, and my executive producer doesn’t have a chance to see his kid often.
“That’s the reason that, when we were taken down, I was thinking about everybody in the studio. It’s because I know how committed they are to the game.”
With a sudden loss of income and very little communication from Valve, both developers knuckled down. Their teams pushed through, continuing to develop games that might never appear on the Steam storefront again. Despite working through the studio’s darkest moment, Dai and his team of around 30 developers committed to doubling the content of Realm of Ink. What was originally planned as DLC has been incorporated into the base game, which is barely recognisable from their initial idea.
If we [wanted to] make a game for money, then we’d just go to Tencent. We’d go to NetEase.
He describes the game as a ship of Theseus, with new ideas bolted on and replacing the old. That’s the early access experience to an extent, but doubling down on that while your playtesters couldn’t try out new updates was a bold strategy. Thankfully, it paid off.
By the time I spoke to Dai, Realm of Ink’s Steam page had already been reinstated. Around a month after I spoke to Black, Kill the Shadow reappeared, too. But it wasn’t simple, it wasn’t perfect, and, once again, it wasn’t communicated to them at all.
Dai received one message from Steam, telling the studio “please do not do that again”. Whatthatis, he has no idea. For Black, it took around another month for him to be able to reupload the demo. Both studios have been set back significantly, their games inaccessible and vanished for months. They both count themselves lucky that they’ve survived where many developers wouldn’t have.
Recovery And Reinvention
“I’m a pretty lucky man,” Dai tells me. “I got delisted, and then got relisted. Not many games can have this. And I got a new publisher. I got delisted when we were tainted, and people still want to help us. I got all these colleagues that trust the studio, trust the game, trust me. If [this were] a movie, it must be a bad movie, because you cannot explain how lucky I am. On the other hand, I’m pretty unlucky too. We got f*cked.”
These games are passion projects. The developers are obsessed with creating something thattheywant to make.
“If we [wanted to] make a game for money, then we’d just go to Tencent. We’d go to NetEase,” Dai says. “We could make so much more money than making an indie game. We just want to prove that we can still do something with our time, with our lives.”
Valve nearly stole that dream from them. To this day, the developers don’t know why their games were delisted. It had something to do with publisher 663 Games, but nobody knows exactly what. They have their own theories, but declined to share them with me as they were just speculation. But what strikes me as most poignant is the fact that Valve and Steam refused to let the teams know about any step of the journey.
“We have a tradition of demonising video games – we used to call video games electronic opium.”
Communication was threadbare, practically non-existent. Valve didn’t even notify the studios that their games were delisted, let alone tell them why or what steps they could take to get their games relisted. Neither developer I spoke to is certain of the reasons they got relisted. They just threw ideas at the wall to see what stuck. One of those changes they made to their storefronts must have worked. Black believes that the termination of their contract with 663 Games was a deciding factor, but communication from Valve remained unclear.
Black’s opinion is simple: “It might be better for small indie teams like Shadowlight to have a chance to communicate with the Steam team to actually talk about it. Instead, [our page was] delisted from the platform, which really hurts the game and team.”
This could mean life and death for indie studios. In this instance, it severely impacted the lives of many developers for months on end. They dealt with such an extensive pay cut and harsh crunch conditions as a direct result of Steam’s inaction and inattentiveness. Without proper communication, there’s no way of knowing which studio will receive the same treatment next. And the next one might not survive. Valve did not respond to a request for comment.
Overcoming Stereotypes
You must also take into account the nationality of the developers involved. Both Dai and Black are Chinese, as are publisher 663 Games and many of the other studios it had on its roster. In gaming as in the political landscape, Chinese games are often maligned simply by virtue of being published in China. While only Tencent has government backing (which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, and is conveniently ignored when it comes to games like Baldur’s Gate 3), all Chinese games are tainted by the nature of their country of origin.
Dai points toBlack Myth Wukongas the exception that proves the rule.
For independent developers making games in the country, they have to overcome these cultural barriers in addition to struggles for recognition within their country – and that’s before their games get delisted on Steam without reason.
“For Chinese developers, we’ve been through some really difficult stages,” says Dai. “[In the past], the Chinese government didn’t support us that much for decades. Chinese [people] are really good at taking exams. Playing games may influence your study time, so we have a tradition of demonising video games – we used to call video games electronic opium.”
He also explains that the language barrier is a serious problem for the burgeoning independent scene. While Dai studied in America and London so speaks great English, most developers need a translator, which impacts opportunities for interviews to market their games in traditional Western media.
“If we had more ways to let Valve or all the players know what is going on in the Chinese development community, maybe the situation can change,” he says. “We’re all hardworking idealists. I really think our story should be known that we’re hardworking people trying to make something great. I don’t want other people to know us as frauds or [that] we are trying to scam other people, because that is not how it is.”
