diff --git a/lib/release/node-workspace.js b/lib/release/node-workspace.js
deleted file mode 100644
index 93ef00f6..00000000
--- a/lib/release/node-workspace.js
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,103 +0,0 @@
-const { NodeWorkspace } = require('release-please/build/src/plugins/node-workspace')
-const { parseConventionalCommits } = require('release-please/build/src/commit')
-const { DEPS } = require('./util')
-const { WORKSPACE_MESSAGE } = require('./node-workspace-format')
-
-// This adds a preconfigure method to the release-please node-workspace plugin
-// which fixes https://github.com/googleapis/release-please/issues/2089 for our
-// use case. We should attempt to upstream this to release-please but it
-// fundamentally changes the way the node-workspace plugin behaves so it might
-// not be easy to land. For now we extend the base plugin and add one method
-// which is much better than previously when we needed to fork and maintain
-// release-please ourselves.
-/* istanbul ignore next: TODO fix flaky tests and enable coverage */
-class NpmNodeWorkspace extends NodeWorkspace {
-  updateCandidate (pr) {
-    // no-op so release-please node-workspace plugin does not add
-    // its broken changelog to the workspace releases. our changelog
-    // formatting and the preconfigure method below fix this.
-    return pr
-  }
-
-  async preconfigure (strategiesByPath, commitsByPath, releasesByPath) {
-    // First build a list of all releases that will happen based on the
-    // conventional commits
-    const candidates = []
-    for (const path in strategiesByPath) {
-      const pullRequest = await strategiesByPath[path].buildReleasePullRequest(
-        parseConventionalCommits(commitsByPath[path]),
-        releasesByPath[path]
-      )
-      // Release please types say this sometimes will return undefined but I could not
-      // get any scenario where that was the case. If it was undefined we would want to
-      // just ignore it anyway.
-      /* istanbul ignore else */
-      if (pullRequest) {
-        candidates.push({
-          path,
-          pullRequest,
-          config: this.repositoryConfig[path],
-        })
-      }
-    }
-
-    // Then build the graph of all those releases + any other connected workspaces
-    const { allPackages, candidatesByPackage } = await this.buildAllPackages(candidates)
-    const graph = await this.buildGraph(allPackages)
-    const packageNamesToUpdate = this.packageNamesToUpdate(graph, candidatesByPackage)
-    const graphPackages = this.buildGraphOrder(graph, packageNamesToUpdate)
-
-    // Then build a list of all the updated versions
-    const updatedVersions = {}
-    for (const pkg of graphPackages) {
-      const path = this.pathFromPackage(pkg)
-      const packageName = this.packageNameFromPackage(pkg)
-      const existingCandidate = candidatesByPackage[packageName]
-
-      if (existingCandidate) {
-        // If there is an existing pull request use that version
-        updatedVersions[packageName] = existingCandidate.pullRequest?.version
-      } else {
-        // Otherwise build another pull request (that will be discarded) just
-        // to see what the version would be if it only contained a deps commit.
-        // This is to make sure we use any custom versioning or release strategy.
-        const releasePullRequest = await strategiesByPath[path].buildReleasePullRequest(
-          parseConventionalCommits([{ message: `${DEPS}: ${Math.random()}` }]),
-          releasesByPath[path]
-        )
-        updatedVersions[packageName] = releasePullRequest?.version
-      }
-    }
-
-    // Then go through all the packages again and add deps commits for each
-    // updated workspace
-    for (const pkg of graphPackages) {
-      const path = this.pathFromPackage(pkg)
-      const packageName = this.packageNameFromPackage(pkg)
-      const graphPackage = graph.get(packageName)
-
-      // Update dependency versions add a deps commit to each path so it gets
-      // processed later. This else never happens in our cases because our
-      // packages always have deps, but keeping this around to make it easier to
-      // upstream in the future.
-      /* istanbul ignore else */
-      if (graphPackage.deps) {
-        for (const depName of graphPackage.deps) {
-          const depVersion = updatedVersions[depName]
-          // Same as the above check, we always have a version here but technically
-          // we could not in which it would be safe to ignore it.
-          /* istanbul ignore else */
-          if (depVersion) {
-            commitsByPath[path].push({
-              message: WORKSPACE_MESSAGE(depName, depVersion.toString()),
-            })
-          }
-        }
-      }
-    }
-
-    return strategiesByPath
-  }
-}
-
-module.exports = NpmNodeWorkspace
diff --git a/lib/release/release-please.js b/lib/release/release-please.js
index 42cd3bb9..96811c2b 100644
--- a/lib/release/release-please.js
+++ b/lib/release/release-please.js
@@ -11,7 +11,6 @@ const assert = require('assert')
 const core = require('@actions/core')
 const omit = require('just-omit')
 const ChangelogNotes = require('./changelog.js')
-const NodeWorkspace = require('./node-workspace.js')
 const NodeWorkspaceFormat = require('./node-workspace-format.js')
 const { getPublishTag, noop } = require('./util.js')
 
@@ -69,8 +68,6 @@ class ReleasePlease {
       new ChangelogNotes(github, o))
     RP.registerVersioningStrategy('default', (o) =>
       o.prerelease ? new PrereleaseVersioningStrategy(o) : new DefaultVersioningStrategy(o))
-    RP.registerPlugin('node-workspace', ({ github, targetBranch, repositoryConfig, ...o }) =>
-      new NodeWorkspace(github, targetBranch, repositoryConfig, o))
     RP.registerPlugin('node-workspace-format', ({ github, targetBranch, repositoryConfig, ...o }) =>
       new NodeWorkspaceFormat(github, targetBranch, repositoryConfig, o))