The Delisting of Spec Ops: The Line is Tragic

The game's removal from digital storefronts is disheartening.

The timing of Spec Ops: The Line and its vanishing from digital storefronts is momentarily hilarious as Mitch and I just revisited the 12 year old game for the podcast. After the slight chuckle escapes my mouth, I am left with the feeling of loss and reminder that the void will continue to eat up games for years to come. 

If you didn’t see the news earlier this week, Yager developed and 2K published 2012 masterpiece, Spec Ops: The Line was pulled from Steam (online PC game retailer). Users noticed and took to the internet to announce their findings. My initial reaction was, as stated, a slight giggle but soon became worrisome. A move like this usually meant that something on the backend expired and the publisher legally had to pull the game from the PC storefront. A part of my brain was hopeful yet and thought that maybe 2K was planning on remaking or re-releasing. Another day went by and it turned out to be the former. 

Kotaku ran an article yesterday and covered the disappearance of not only the game from the Steam storefront but also ALL digital storefronts. If you do not already own a digital copy of Spec Ops: The Line, you cannot purchase a digital copy now. Tried and true physical copies are still out there but probably not for long (or at least reasonably priced). 

The reason for 2K pulling the game from digital storefronts is a boring one - it has to do with an expired license and they can’t legally sell the game anymore. Games vanishing from storefronts like this is not uncommon. In fact, Epic Game recently pulled Unreal, the 1998 world-changing PC game, from digital storefronts. You know, the game they named their development engine off of - the one that made them famous. I guess if it’s not bringing in Fortnite money then fuck it, right? 

I used to be pretty evangelical about physical media but after install sizes on games didn’t matter if you had the disc or not, I gave up. The reason I loved collecting physical copies of games was to cut down on storage space on my console. That was done away with in the last 10 years so I have downloaded games or held in a digital library since then. Unless it’s the Switch - Nintendo thankfully doesn’t force anyone to install full games onto their console (their handling of older games and their availability is a different story, though). 

Spec Ops: The Line’s removal doesn’t surprise me from a business standpoint. The game made little money back and the cost to re-up those licenses is seen as a loss for the company rather than a gain. They don’t care about preservation. It’s not in their best interest as a publisher to maintain games that don’t sell. With that said, it still breaks my heart. 

I think it breaks my heart because Spec Ops: The Line is a game I feel is important and not just important to me but important to “video games” as a whole. What Yager did as a studio (and 2K signed off on as a publisher) was criticize the modern military shooter genre and also depict what war did to people especially when recent wars have a difficult time portraying who truly is the “bad guy.” There hasn’t been a game that has haunted me as much as Spec Ops: The Line and until recently, I only played through it once. For 12 years I thought about the game and what it had to say. It’s so effective that I could only play it once until revisiting because like I stated in the podcast, it makes me feel “icky.” It makes me despise modern shooters and my own feelings of glorifying violence in video games. Which is quite the opposite feeling I have when replaying Max Payne 3 in recent days. MP3 glorifies violence with zero commentary on how it makes anyone “feel.” There is room for both in my book because not all video games need to say the same thing or have the same mentality with how they approach the player and their actions. 

My reason for this post was to highlight not only how weird it was that Mitch and I just talked about this game again but also to remind you all that good games don’t matter in the face of profit. Hold onto the games you love and don’t expect them to always be there. I think it’s also worth noting that this might help the game soar into more of a cult status than it previously was. 

I just hope the legacy of Spec Ops: The Line lives on and doesn’t get washed away in the sand like Dubai did in its story.