Yesterday, excitement started to spread online after news emerged that Radical Entertainment and Vivendi's video game adaptation of Scarface had been reissued on the Epic Games Store and was also being prepped for an eventual Steam release.
However, alongside this excitement, there was understandably a large amount of skepticism that began to build, with many wondering how an unknown publisher — in this case EC Digital Entertainment — had managed to untangle the complex web of rights that had prevented the game from being reissued in the past.
As the day developed, the situation only got fishier and fishier, as more details started to appear, with the publisher announcing in a statement that the Epic Games Store release had been "unintentionally pushed live" during "a technical issue during backend configuration."
This was then followed by the discovery by the commenter PCMachinima on Reddit that the game was reportedly shipping with a set of mods (SilentPatch and Fusion Fix), leading one of the developers of the two mods to label the release "suspect".
Now, it appears this skepticism was exceptionally well-founded, with EC Digital Entertainment releasing yet another update, suggesting it hadn't overcome all of the licensing hurdles, and that the two store pages were only meant to be "placeholder[s]" while they continued negotiations behind the scenes (thanks, Push Square!).
"The current page was initially intended as a placeholder while we worked through ongoing licensing and technical matters," EC Digital Entertainment wrote. "Unfortunately, the unintended release of certain builds on other platforms caused unexpected complications and concerns. Because of that, we feel it’s necessary to pause and reevaluate."
It also seems the Epic Games Store and Steam pages have now been pulled down, casting a large amount of doubt on the future of the reissue.