Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition withdrawn from sale over "contractual issues"

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, the attempted restoration of BioWare's classic RPG, has been removed from sale by developer Overhaul Games in light of contractual issues with the game's publishing partners. A statement by Beamdog/Overhaul president Trent Oster explains the situation - albeit in the vague manner of someone staring at a heavy pile of legal documents.

"We recently removed Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition from sale on Beamdog and the Apple App Store. We've taken this step at our publishing partner's request as we attempt to resolve a number of contractual issues."

Oster goes on to say that, until the "complex legal matters" have been resolved, the developer is unable to release the planned next patch to the game. It would have brought an updated user interface, "enormous performance improvements", enhancements and a new font system.

Perhaps more troublingly, the issues are also blocking Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. While BG:EE struck me as slightly less enhanced than a properly modded version of the original, BG2:EE was shaping up to be a more dramatic revision - already boasting 350,000 words of additional content.

Strangely, you can still pick BG:EE up from Steam . Whether it's due to be taken down is unclear, but the Steam release was handled by Atari instead of Beamdog, and so received no direct support.

Phil Savage
Editor-in-Chief

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.