TouchArcade Rating:

After the little scuffle over Bioshock a couple of weeks ago, I’d hoped to not have to come back around to this topic again soon. Oh well, two weeks is a pretty good run, right? The latest publisher to pull a game from the purchase histories of customers who bought it is Capcom, and the game in question is Ghost Trick.The game was pulled from the App Store months back after an update fixed the game in one way and broke it in another, but the main app was still available to redownload via the purchase history tab up until this weekend, as near as I can tell.

Admittedly, it’s a slightly different situation, as unless you had the game fully installed already, you would only be able to play the free first chapter before running into the bug that likely resulted in its removal in the first place. Namely, that the IAP system completely broke, blocking people from buying the rest of the game or even restoring it if they had already bought it. While players had held out hope that Capcom would eventually fix the game even after pulling it from the main storefront, this latest move makes it seem a lot less likely that we’ll be seeing the return of Sissel and company anytime soon. Not impossible, mind you, but it’s not looking good.

I’ve reached out to Capcom for comment, but given their stance on supporting their iOS games these days, I’m not hopeful for a happy ending like we seem to have gotten in other cases. They’ve made it clear that the iOS 9-incompatible Monster Hunter Freedom Unite won’t be fixed anytime soon, and virtually every other game they have available on the store warns that compatibility isn’t guaranteed from now on. It’s an odd turn for a company that seemed heavily invested in mobile gaming not that long ago, but Capcom’s always been a fickle beast. It’s a particular shame in Ghost Trick‘s case, as while you can certainly track down a second-hand copy of the Nintendo DS version without much trouble, it’s unlikely to ever be released again on another platform due to its relatively poor sales performance. Great games like that deserve better, if you ask me.