Only Up! creator pulls viral game from Steam: ‘I want to put the game behind me’

The creator of viral indie game Only Up! pulled the game from Steam on Sept. 8 due to “stress” and is taking a break before developing a new game.

The news comes less than three months after Only Up! was removed from Steam due to copyright infringement at the end of June. The game also sparked controversy in the same month for promoting NFTs. Now, the removal from Steam seems permanent as the solo developer SCKR Games wants to focus on a future project named Kith with other game developers after taking a break.

“The game has kept me under a lot of stress all these months, now I want to put the game behind me,” the creator of Only Up! wrote in a Discord message, according to PCGamesN. “The game won’t be available in the Steam store soon, that’s what I decided myself. What I need now is peace of mind and healing.”

Only Up! amassed over 12,000 reviews on Steam since it was added in May and has a “mostly positive” review score on Valve’s platform. The reason why so many people played Only Up! is mainly because of its overly challenging mechanics, which was highlighted by several Twitch and YouTube content creators.

IShowSpeed, for example, uploaded a full playthrough of Only Up! in June, and the video currently has over five million views. Only Up! was also a Twitch hit, having peaked at nearly 280,000 concurrent viewers in June, according to Sullygnome’s statistics—massive for a small indie game.

Although fans can no longer download Only Up! on Steam, its page remains active for now. The name has been changed to “not available” and SCKR Games is no longer shown as the publisher and developer.