the oldest patch or two were removed. they explained that less than a hundred people were using them.
To clarify, they were requested to do so by Steam as they will only support so many "beta" entries in the Betas tab of any one game. So they picked the versions with the lowest user counts.As one of those few players, I'm sorry to hear that they removed roughly 5 patches. Thanks for your help.
This means that others will probably have to go as new releases come out.