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2006 Scarface Game Mysteriously Resurfaces On Steam And People Are Worried It’s A Scam

Lawyers might be having interesting conversations right now

2006’s Scarface: The World is Yours is back! Well, maybe. It’s complicated. Possibly illegal. See, the Vice City-lookin’ open-world action-adventure game for PS2, Xbox, and Wii recently resurfaced on Steam and the Epic Games Store. That’s (possibly) good news if you like diving into some gaming deep tracks from the early 21st Century. But it’s bad news if you’re the rights holder to this game because you didn’t give anyone permission to do this.

Arriving on Steam and EGS, the loose adaptation of the legendary gangster film is back courtesy of a publisher named EC Digital Entertainment, who promises some graphical upgrades to the 2006 game (yes, they’re “AI-assisted”). But as Rock Paper Shotgun documents, EC Digital Entertainment doesn’t have much of a history. Based in Hong Kong, their website is blocked for whatever reason, and their YouTube page is filled with so many tumbleweeds it’s giving me Arc Raiders PTSD flashbacks. What’s more, this version of Scarface includes some QoL mods baked in without permission from its creators, one of whom is clearly stating “the holder of the Scarface license wasn’t willing to re-release the game.” So how did this happen?

We love a mystery.

As flummoxed as any of us by this strange news, the creator of SilentPatch dug in a bit more to find out that the author of one of the included mods was contacted. However, they also found that the “Movie IP rights holder appears to be unaware [of the Steam and EGS listing]” and that the store pages launched prematurely.

Weird stuff for sure. You can buy the EGS version right now, though the Steam listing still says “coming soon.”

As for the game itself, I faintly remember seeing the box art on store shelves back in the 2000s and at the time thought, “Why wouldn’t I just play GTA?” Al Pacino lent his likeness and personally chose his voice replacement for Tony Montana, but a few other actors from the movie did reprise their roles. Critical reception of the game was mostly positive, hovering around 7’s out of 10’s, with the occasional 6 and one 4.5 out of 10 from Official Xbox Magazine. Sequels and a PSP and Xbox 360 version were planned, but later scrapped.

I like seeing old games, possible hidden gems, return from eons past. But it sounds like this rerelease of Scarface might be best avoided for now.

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