Alice: Madness Returns is back on Steam again, American McGee says ‘yikes’

Just a couple days after Alice: Madness Returns disappeared without warning from Steam, it's back on the storefront, and it turns out that—as expected—the whole thing was a big mistake.

It's been a wild ride for American McGee's twisted take on Alice in Wonderland. It was delisted from Steam in 2016, apparently thanks to some verification problems with publisher Electronic Arts. It returned earlier this year but last week went poof yet again, this time with no notice or explanation. 

Even American McGee, founder of developer Spicy Horse (and whose name adorns Madness Returns' predecessor) wasn't sure what happened, although he speculated that somebody, somewhere, had likely just pushed the wrong button.

As it turns out, he was correct. "One of our team mistakenly instructed Support to 'shut down everything' when the topic was 'Akaneiro'—wrongly thinking other games (like A:MR) had been moved to a Mysterious Inc account," McGee tweeted. "Yikes."

Mysterious Inc. is McGee's current "business headquarters," which offers products like books, art, and other merchandise for sale. Spicy Horse closed its doors in 2016.

While Madness Returns is returned, American McGee's Alice is still not available on Steam (although it wasn't available there in the first place), and unfortunately McGee doesn’t know where to get it these days. Grimm is still listed, but it's no longer being offered for sale; it's not clear whether that's connected to the Akaneiro accident, but it is a relatively recent change, as the Wayback Machine indicates that Grimm was available for purchase as recently as April 7. (It 's still available for purchase on GOG.) Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, the game that started this whole thing (and which I actually rather liked in its pre-release days) is also still listed on Steam but not actually available to buy.