We reported a few weeks back that developer Realtech VR would soon be remastering the original three Tomb Raider games and would be bringing them to Steam at a later date. Well, looks like that plan was short-lived.
Realtech VR took back to Twitter and announced in a tweet that is now deleted that those projects were canceled. After deleting this tweet for one reason or another — likely because they are not at liberty to say much — they tweeted out the following message stating that they would no longer be working on third-party licenses anymore.
After this episode, we are refocusing on new projects involving Augmented Reality on iOS and VR on PC. We are not more committed on third party license anymore.
— realtech VR (@realtech_VR) March 21, 2018
Details of what happened are scarce, but something clearly went wrong behind the scenes with Realtech. They stated in subsequent tweets replying to fans that they had already begun working on the remasters while also saying that they aren’t at liberty to provide further details of the situation. This is a strange occurrence for sure, but those who still want to play the original Tomb Raider games can still find them on Steam. Realtech’s remasters of Tomb Raider 1 and 2 should also still be available on mobile.
Luckily, Square Enix revealed that the next iteration of the current Tomb Raider trilogy, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, will be arriving later this year on September 14. Even if you can’t take a trip with Lara back in time to experience the original games with updated visuals, Shadow of the Tomb Raider looks like it should satisfy us more than enough to fill our Tomb Raider quota for 2018.