If the removal was done by Steam, it opens Steam up to a lawsuit from the publisher. For a non-valid reason, they restricted it to a number of countries for their own business gain at the cost of the second party's income. That is a form of tortuous interference, and Steam would be liable for all the refunds and all the lost potential sales.
Steam is stupid, and has more than a few danger-hair DIE types, but I don't think they're quite so terminally stupid as to do that.
Not that I know the finer points of business or contract law—or whatever contract Steam may have in place specifically—but I would think "you made it so that the people here literally cannot use this product, we cannot sell it to them because of that" should be a valid reason.
"We aren't obligated to continue to sell a non-functioning product that could open us up to legal liabilities" should be somewhere in Steam's contract, one would think.
If the removal was done by Steam, it opens Steam up to a lawsuit from the publisher. For a non-valid reason, they restricted it to a number of countries for their own business gain at the cost of the second party's income. That is a form of tortuous interference, and Steam would be liable for all the refunds and all the lost potential sales.
Steam is stupid, and has more than a few danger-hair DIE types, but I don't think they're quite so terminally stupid as to do that.
Not that I know the finer points of business or contract law—or whatever contract Steam may have in place specifically—but I would think "you made it so that the people here literally cannot use this product, we cannot sell it to them because of that" should be a valid reason.
"We aren't obligated to continue to sell a non-functioning product that could open us up to legal liabilities" should be somewhere in Steam's contract, one would think.