Update (March 8, 2022 - 9:34 PM ET) - Madmind Studio has resolved the issue surrounding the free Agony Unrated DLC that was erroneously removed from player accounts.
Madmind Studio reached out to us with the news that Agony Unrated is now available as a free DLC for the original Agony. A late February Steam news post from the developers notes that they will make efforts to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.
According to that same news post, the complimentary copies of Agony Unrated were provided due to a special arrangement with Valve that linked the two games together. However, Madmind Studio says that Valve had made the decision that this situation was no longer acceptable, ultimately resulting in the solution we have today.
Update (February 19, 2022 - 10:04 PM ET) - Madmind Studio has posted another update on the situation with complimentary copies of Agony Unrated being removed from Steam accounts.
Here's the statement in full from Madmin Studio on the Agony Unrated Steam news post.
Hello Martyrs!
A lot of you have been contacting us to report that Agony UNRATED has been removed from your libraries. We looked into it and found out that this is indeed the case and the two versions of the game (Agony and Agony: Unrated) were delinked by Steam.
As most of you know, until now, if you bought Agony you also received a copy of Agony UNRATED in your library. This was always our intended way to do this and that didn’t change. As some of you are also aware, games with themes similar to ours can often face some difficulties on this platform.
Unfortunately, we still don’t have full knowledge on why they were delinked and we’re unable to link the games again using our own tools, so we’re now in contact with Steam support to work out the solution that’ll satisfy everyone.
Stay tuned, as we’ll definitely announce any changes here and on our Discord.
Madmind Studio
No further updates have been posted on Steam or Madmind Studio's Discord at the time of writing, nor are there any recent updates to SteamDB. If you want to join their Discord, you can do so by following this link. We'll continue to monitor the situation.
Update (February 19, 2022 - 1:06 AM ET) - The issue with the removal of Agony Unrated from some users was apparently an error according to one of the developers on Steam.
"Hi, the announcement will be published shortly, but for now, I can say that this wasn't our intention and we're in contact with Steam to resolve this and get the game back to all of you," read a Steam Community comment from a developer account.
As far as we can tell, no other official statement beyond this comment has been released at the time of this update. We'll continue to monitor this story as we wait for a response.
Our original story continues below.
Several owners of Madmind Studio's Agony are reporting that their complimentary copy of Agony Unrated has been removed from their Steam account.
Agony is a first-person survival horror game that was unable to complete its original Kickstarter campaign. It was subsequently revived and pegged for a 2018 release date. Unfortunately, a new problem emerged -- the developer subsequently announced that the game would be censored. Whatever caused the initial censorship, that decision was subsequently reversed a few weeks after the game first went on sale -- a separate version of the game called Agony Unrated was released.
The reversal of the censorship also presented a problem: several players had already bought the uncensored version of Agony. Madmind Studio's solution was to give all owners of Agony a copy of Agony Unrated for free as detailed in this Steam Community news post.
"Let's make this year's Halloween even more special, shall we?" read the Steam Community news post. "Agony UNRATED will be a free game for all players who bought the basic version of Agony on the Steam platform!"
Now, something odd has happened -- several owners of the original game are reporting that their complimentary copies of Agony Unrated have been removed from their Steam libraries.
What Happened with Agony Unrated?
A Steam Community discussion started by a user name jieyu inquired about the removal of Agony Unrated from his Steam library. That user highlighted a particular change on SteamDB which showed the removal of the game.
Changelist #13979481 2 days ago · 16 February 2022 – 22:53:21 UTC Removed this app from package Agony
ChangeNumber – 13198121 › 13979481
This changelist affected 1 other packages.
This change affects the "Package" Agony, which is sort of like a bundle in terms of Steam's backend. Originally, the package contained both Agony and Agony Unrated. With the apparent removal from Agony Unrated, this has also reportedly had the side effect of revoking all of the complimentary copies of Agony Unrated that were given to Agony owners.
While there is a fair amount of user reports about something happening with Agony Unrated, it isn't entirely clear why. We've reached out to the developer on this matter and will update this article when we receive a reply.
Was your copy of Agony Unrated removed from your Steam library? What did you think of the game when you first played it? Let us know in the comments below!
