Last week, horror game fans everywhere were shocked to learn that the 2010 horror game Alan Wake will be removed from digital retailers due to the game’s expiring music rights. This makes Alan Wake one of the most successful games to be yanked from digital retail outlets due to licensing issues.

Of course, this isn’t the only hardship that Alan Wake has faced since the project’s inception. In fact, the version of Alan Wake that you can no longer buy via Steam and other online outlets isn’t even the version of the game that Remedy initially intended to release.

A new article by GamesRadar summarizes the history of Alan Wake‘s development and goes into detail regarding the project’s long-rumored roots as an open-world horror title.

According to the game’s developers, Alan Wake was originally billed as a mix between Grand Theft Auto and Silent Hill. Remedy felt that the open-world genre hadn’t turned out a truly great horror game, and they were determined to show the world that a horror epic could still pack the intimate scares of a title like Silent Hill.