WWE 2K gained back a lot of credibility earlier this year via the launch of WWE 2K22. The studio took a year off to recover from the disaster that was WWE 2K20 and it paid off. However, if for some reason you still want to buy WWE 2K20 on Steam, or any of the WWE 2K installments that came before it, it would appear you're currently out of luck.
The removal of WWE 2K17, 18, 19, and 20 appears to have been noticed by Popstasia and shared on Reddit (via PC Gamer). A little digging has uncovered that the older games were unceremoniously ousted from Steam almost two weeks ago on July 13. Since 2K decided to let that happen without as much as a tweet to let people know, it was only when someone searched for them and came up empty that their absence was noted.
Since it took almost two weeks for anyone to even notice the games were gone, you might argue that their removal was probably warranted. Not to mention, as touched upon above, WWE 2K22 has been so well received, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to go back and play any of the older games. 2K19 was more popular than 2K20, but still not so much that people would leave the newest game behind and go back three years to play it.
What WWE 2K fans are now trying to figure out is why exactly the games have disappeared. Titles disappearing from online storefronts without so much as a mention from the studios that created them isn't out of the ordinary. Usually it relates to licensing issues, such as the rights to music in a game expiring. While WWE and 2K shouldn't have any issue when it comes to wrestlers' entrance themes, each game has a soundtrack. That may well be the reason why these games have been removed.
There's also the future of the relationship between WWE and 2K to consider. There has been no word yet on when WWE 2K23 might launch, if at all. Especially since there were rumors WWE had spoken to EA about creating its games in the future. The company is also working on a WWE RPG, the finer details of which are yet to be revealed.
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