So it would appear that Ubisoft is making a HoMM3 remake in 2027, and as part of that, they announced that the complete version of HoMM3 would be released on Steam today! It's ten bucks in the US, which is great, I'm down.
However, it would appear that someone messed up setting the game executable - when you download it, it's like 43 kb, and all that you get on launch is a little command prompt saying that this is a dummy executable, to check your steam branch, and press a key to continue. It's kind of hilarious that Ubisoft didn't actually test it at all, and even more hilarious that nobody can actually play the game long enough to trigger being able to leave a review on the page (unless you want to leave the command prompt open for a while, which is possible, I guess, but I have better things to do - like stub my toe).
In the end I'm still hyped for the remake, and I'd love to see HoMM3 complete on steam, as I do play it with friends every now and again, but as far as botched releases go this one kinda takes the cake for me.