Update July 12th 2:10PM: Fly Corp has flown its way back to Steam. The game is now available once again on Valve's platform, although we still don't know whether Bus Driver Simulator or Metro Simulator are returning to Steam anytime soon.
Update July 5th 8:52AM: KishMish says it knows why Fly Corp was removed from Steam. According to a statement given by the publisher on its official Discord channel, on the day the game was removed, one of its partners was banned from Steam, and that partner "had access to app control" within Steam. The initial line from Valve regarding the game being a resubmission of a banned app was "a mistake that was admitted by Steam support", according to KishMish. The studio says it's hoping to reinstate Fly Corp on Steam soon and implores fans to write to Valve and ask them to return it to the store.
In addition to this news, KishMish also issued an update for a Fly Corp patch that it distributed after the game was removed from Steam. If you're playing Fly Corp and you want to apply the patch, you'll have to download it via Google Drive and extract the archive's contents into your game folder. Hopefully, Fly Corp will be available via Steam soon and you'll be able to update the game that way. Original story follows below.
Original story: Valve has mysteriously banned several games by Moscow-based developer and publisher KishMish Games from Steam. The official reason given for at least one of the games is that it is a "resubmission" of an already-banned game, but KishMish flatly denies this claim.
Which KishMish games have been removed from Steam?
Yesterday, Fly Corp developer Talentplace posted on Reddit that Valve had banned his game from Steam "without any reason". According to Talentplace, he wrote to Steam asking why they had banned the game, and they responded after a week, telling him that the game is a "resubmission of a previously banned app". Talentplace denies this, however, stating that he has never published Fly Corp before and that it is a "completely original" project with no reused assets from other titles. It turns out that Fly Corp publisher KishMish Games also tweeted about this; on June 24th, the publisher tweeted that users had reported Fly Corp, as well as Bus Driver Simulator and Metro Simulator, disappearing from their Steam libraries.
KishMish says it doesn't know why these games have been removed. Just yesterday, the studio tweeted the same message that Talentplace received, which was a message from Valve explaining that Fly Corp had been banned due to being a resubmission. KishMish urges players to write to Valve's support department and request "justice" for the issue. It isn't clear whether Metro Simulator and Bus Driver Simulator were removed for the same reasons as Fly Corp, s KishMish hasn't shared any justification on Valve's part for those games' removal.
Why have these KishMish games been banned?
As KishMish itself has stated, we don't know the exact reason why these games have been banned. However, it's worth noting a couple of things about KishMish. First off, it seems that several of the developer's games have been removed from Steam in the past, as pointed out by this Steam Community commenter. Games like VCB: Why City and WordKiller: Revolution appear to no longer be available on Steam, so there's a chance that this could have something to do with Fly Corp's removal. Several KishMish games, including several by Talentplace, remain available on Steam, so this is obviously not a blanket ban of the developer's entire oeuvre.
One thing that is worth noting is that KishMish Games is Russian, which could be impacting Valve's decision. There's no evidence to suggest this is the case, so we're simply speculating here, but Valve has previously blocked payments to both Russian and Ukrainian studios, so this could be a factor in Fly Corp and the other KishMish games' removal. It's also true to say that Valve's removal process can be extremely opaque; the company will sometimes quietly change its rules for game admission or removal, and it will also sometimes ban games from Steam for reasons that don't seem entirely transparent.
Unfortunately, we don't have a whole lot to go on here; Valve has seemingly only given a reason for removing one KishMish game from Steam, and it's one that the publisher flat-out denies. We don't even know why Metro Simulator or Bus Driver Simulator were removed from Steam. We've reached out to KishMish Games and Valve for clarification on a few issues in this story and will update as soon as we have more for you.
