NBA 2K20, 2K19, and 2K18 all removed from Steam

It was made aware to me that 2K20 has been removed from the Steam store. I went to check and it appears that 2k19 and 2k18 are also no longer available for purchase. Definitely interesting to see 2k20 get removed so soon considering 2k18 stayed for around 4 1/2 years. It is a shame because I know 2k20 and 2k19 are both still heavily modded and updated games and people will now have to get them through 3rd party sites. Don't worry, you can still purchase VC

NBA 2K17 was up for a long time after its servers were shut down as well. Seems they're being a bit more vigilant in removing the games that are no longer supported, though it's certainly shady that VC for those games can still be purchased; even more so than continuing to sell them for full price.

It appears you can also purchase VC for 2k19 despite the servers being down for well over a year. I'm not going to test if the purchase actually goes through in the store, but just funny that they left that up. Especially since PC versions have been digital-only for the past several years now, it makes it quite annoying to try to acquire these games once they are off of Steam.

Speaking of full price, 2K has made it very clear they want you to buy the latest and "greatest" game as I've only ever seen the current version of the game go on sale. 2k17, 2k18, 2k19, and 2k20 were full price of 60 USD to the very end

Definitely. They weren't about retro collecting. The irony is that people probably would've dropped $20 on those games for the sake of completion and checking out games they missed, padding out the sales numbers and revenue a bit.

you can buy it on G2A and for cheaper than what Steam would charge

Indeed. Basically the only viable option if you don't already own those games, and want to add them to your collection.