Cryostasis is/was a dark, wet and cold survival horror game which has you play as Alexander Nesterov, a meteorologist near the North Pole in 1981, who was supposed to hitch a lift on a nuclear powered Russian icebreaker Ship only to found it shipwrecked and desolate. Through a series of Mental Echoes, an interesting flashback mechanic, a desperate psychological horror story unravels and the player must use the elements to survive and push forward.

It was a fantastic game and despite being fairly dated, is still one hell of a run, especially considering it was one of the first games to ever use Nvidias' PhysX[physxinfo.com].


Cryostasis was originally released in February, 2009 and was only added to Steam in 2012, and was then removed less than a year later. While there was no announcement from Steam, nor the Developer, nor the Publisher, community response suggests it was removed after a dispute to the rights between the Publisher (1C) and Developers (Action Forms). When you consider that Action Forms (Cryostasis' developers) split/disbanded into two new developer groups[carnivores.wikia.com]- Tatem Games and Beatshapers and that 1C removed the game from all storefronts, presumably shortly after that split, it's very likely that they simply lost the IP rights.

This means that there's no guarantee or reason to believe it will return to Steam.


* Option 1: Buying a Steam redeemable key from Amazon

There are several listings on Amazon for keys which work on Steam. It's important to note the high possibility that these are simply saved keys from the Indie Bundles which included Cryostasis around the time it was removed from Steam in 2012, which puts them in a somewhat grey area.

* Option 2: Trading

There are also several keys and even very rare tradable copies listed on various trading sites, some at sane prices, some more ridiculous. Mileage may vary.

* Option 3: Waiting

Failing the other methods there's nothing to suggest it wont return one day, if the developers figure out what to do with the rights, or it was removed from Steam for some other unknown reason, its a possibility.
Failing even that, the game will eventually be considered Abandonware, and downloading it via questionable methods may become an option for some.

Keep in mind that Cryostasis is still just a game, and has many problems and issues, this information is just for those who are interested enough to poke around or who might still want to pick up a copy.