The Asylum map: why it was pulled
The Asylum — 1.0's headline third map — was released September 11, 2026 and gone three days later: the developer confirmed its base, a marketplace asset, was copied from Outlast, pulled it himself, and recommended refunds for anyone who bought the game for the map.
On September 11, 2026, Anomaly Company left Early Access with its biggest update yet — and a third map, the Asylum, that players had been asking for since the game launched. Seventy-two hours later, the map was gone. This is the whole story, told from the developer's own posts.
Official screenshot from the game's Steam page — a cornered door on the Office map. There are no Asylum screenshots on this page by design: the developer removed the map's own promotional assets from Steam, and we don't republish material from a pulled, disputed level.
The map players had asked for for months
The Asylum — "Blackwell Asylum" in the developer's posts — was the scarier-than-normal level the community had spent months requesting, and Kekdot had been working on it long before 1.0. In February 2026 he confirmed it existed but wasn't ready: "I feel like Blackwell Asylum needs more time to become the terrifying place I want it to be (hehe)." By September it was the centrepiece of the full release: "I planned to make this map my big event, and even planned to release the game out of Early Access parallel to releasing this map, which I did on Friday."
Three days
- September 11, 2026 — 1.0 ships; the Asylum map goes live, to a strong first response. "On the first day or two I received a great response from lots of you telling me you loved the level."
- September 13–14 — comments accumulate under the map's YouTube trailer: it looks like a map from Outlast. Kekdot investigates. "I decided to do some thorough checking, and came to the same conclusion as the comments that it indeed looks extremely similar. This immediately shocked me."
- September 14, 2026 — he removes the map and all of its Steam assets (screenshots, trailer, news post), reports the marketplace asset and its seller, and publishes the announcement post. "I am totally against infringing on original IP of any games, and would have never spent my months creating this map, all to have to remove it 3 days after release."
The asset at the centre of it
The Asylum was built on a marketplace environment asset — a purchased level base, first listed in August 2022 — which turned out to be, in the developer's words, "a wayyy too close copy of a map from a game released back in 2013" (Outlast). His account points at the asset's creator: "He completely failed to disclose anywhere that the level he made was completely based on a level from another game... And as it states on his ArtStation account, he wrote: 'All location and objects were created from scratch.'"
On the marketplace's side: "As a buyer on the FAB marketplace, you should be able to assume that the assets you purchase are okay to use in your games. It also specifically states this in the FAB marketplace Terms... how this could have happened and why he was allowed to even sell, and to this day still sell that asset on the marketplace is unclear to me."
In his own words
I had no idea, the friends I tested with had no idea, and I was dumbfounded.
To those of you who specifically purchased the game for this map, I recommend refunding the game as I won't be able to include this map for the reasons stated above. And as making a new map will most likely take me a few months again.
This has been an enormous waste of energy and I apologize dearly to those of you who have long awaited the map... this is unfortunately a very very very unlucky situation that I could not have foreseen.
Moving forward however, I will not be buying any assets off of marketplaces in the future. This could have happened to any developer. We simply can't have played every game on earth, especially games from more than a decade ago.
Can it come back?
Unannounced, with two clues. One: he still calls the concept "Blackwell Asylum" and said it needed "more time" — not that it was dead. Two: a replacement "will most likely take me a few months again." If it returns, his commitment means it'll be rebuilt without any marketplace assets. As of September 29, 2026, there has been no further news post — the game's Steam feed is where a return would be announced first.
If you bought the game for this map
You're covered: the developer's announcement explicitly recommends refunding Anomaly Company if the Asylum was your reason for buying. Everything else in 1.0 — the Office, the Hotel, the anomaly pools, the polish — is unaffected and still in the game. When the situation changes, this page gets updated first.
