1.) If I purchased it before the removal, can I still download it, or is it gone altogether?
2.) Is there another way to get a legit download of the game that would allow me to use my Steam key to play it again or would I be SOL?
I’m low on of storage space, and I was thinking of temporarily uninstalling some games I’m not really playing lately, but worried about permanently losing them.
As far as I know, of the few games removed from the Steam store all are still available for download if you purchased it before removal. I do recall that one may have been removed forever, but it’s extremely rare, and I think it was put back after enough people complained.
You could just spend a hundred bucks for a few terabytes of external hard drive space. Steam supports making backups of your games in this fashion. And while it might not help if a game is removed for good, I’ve found a lot of recent games take well to simply copying and pasting the games, even between computers running different operating systems.
Thanks Jragon, good to know. Oh, and Grumman, thanks for the tip; I didn’t realize you could do that.