I was a big fan of Condemned: Criminal Origins back in the day. That day was 20 years ago and I can’t really remember what it was about, except that I was an FBI burnout of some sort, splitting my time between investigating murders and committing them. Trailers really don’t do it justice: Condemned is probably the best ‘beat a man to death with a large piece of wood’ game I’ve ever played.
I would recommend that you play it, too, except, well, you can’t. At least not as easily as you could yesterday. As noticed today by Wario64, Condemned: Criminal Origins has been removed from Steam and the Xbox store, and unfortunately it’s not available on GOG either. It used to be there, on Steam—here’s the SteamDB listing—but now, poof. Gone. You can, at least, still get a working code on Fanatical for now.
Condemned: Criminal Origins has been delisted from Steam buff.ly/eHqzT9N
and Xbox buff.ly/HkmlCNM
Steam code still available on Fanatical ($13.45) buff.ly/Cq89UDF— @wario64.bsky.social (@wario64.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-31T20:03:52.479Z
The big, obvious question is, why? There’s no answer currently forthcoming but quite a few people on social media are hoping it means a remaster is in order. The timing would certainly seem to give oxygen to that flame—Condemned is a very Halloween-coded game—and hey, it’s probably just a coincidence but since we’re speculating anyway, I’m going to go deep conspiracy and point out that it also happened exactly one week after Nightdive’s interview with Jace Hall. Nightdive is of course famed for its remakes and remasters of classic games, and you may not know who Jace Hall is because you’re not old like me, so it’s fortunate I’m here to tell you: He’s a co-founder of Monolith.
Who made Condemned: Criminal Origins? Monolith.
Look, I’m not saying it’s all right there for those with eyes to see, but come on. Put it together, people!
Now, to be perfectly clear, I have no games journalist inside information at hand here: I don’t know anything more about what’s going on here than you, and yes, this all might be a little performative. It might also somehow be connected to the renewed efforts to sell Warner Bros. Discovery, Warner being the parent company of Monolith—until it closed the studio amidst a major bloodletting earlier this year.
Remaining optimistic for the moment, however, I am very excited by the possibility that somebody might be updating Condemned for modern systems, and perhaps even bringing Condemned 2 our way as well: The sequel was only released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and frankly I’m still a little sore about that.
I’ve reached out to Sega, the publisher of Condemned, to ask about what’s cooking—fingers crossed it’s something good. In the meantime, if you want to play something more than a little Condemned-like, Butcher Creek from Dusk creator Dave Szymanski is very much in that style, and there’s a demo on Steam so you can try before you buy.
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