What happens when your game gets delisted?
26.04.2024 - 16:03
/ polygon.com
Cory Davis woke up one morning in January to some unfortunate news: Spec Ops: The Line, the game he directed at Yager Development, had been removed from digital storefronts. Over 24 hours, the game would disappear from Steam, GOG, and the Xbox Store. At the time of this writing, it’s not available to buy new digitally.
“At first I thought, This is probably a mistake or something that’ll be resolved in the next few hours, so I was kind of in denial mode,” he recounted to Polygon. “It became obvious after a little while that it was not just Steam, but it was coming down off of other stores as well.”
The 2012 shooter didn’t perform as well as publisher 2K Games would’ve liked when it first launched, but it’s become a cult classic for how it subverted the fantasy of other military shooters from the time. “We were all really shocked. It’s kind of that feeling like your mark on the world is being erased,” Davis continued. “All games are extremely difficult to pull off and to put in the hands of people who understand and enjoy them. There was just so much extra effort that went into this one. [...] We broke through a lot of boundaries that are still difficult ones, especially for AAA games.”
Related
There are a lot of reasons why a video game might be delisted or taken offline. A spokesperson for 2K revealed in a statement that Spec Ops: The Line had been removed “as several partnership licenses related to the game are expiring,” which makes sense since the game uses a lot of licensed music, including tracks from Jimi Hendrix. However, the reason why games might be delisted can be way more complicated than that. For example, a slate of Adult Swim games was removed from Steam recently; a representative from the publisher’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, told one developer that the decision “stems from logistical and resource constraints” but didn’t give any other details. A delisting can often leave a developer stuck in limbo, having to rely on the publisher to figure out licensing issues or other problems, all while knowing their game isn’t legally digitally available anywhere.
Video games disappear all the time. The Video Game History Foundation co-ran a study in 2023 that revealed “only 13 percent of classic video games published in the United States are currently in release.” That means almost nine out of 10 games can only be played if you find a physical copy in a secondhand market or pirate a copy online. Even if a game is available to buy, it might not be playable, as many are taken offline and their servers shut down due to corporate decision-making. Just last week, Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Sumo Digital announced that the servers for LittleBigPlanet 3 would be taken