Welcome to Delisted Games, a growing archive of 841 games you can’t play.
The site is expanding all the time with new additions, reader submissions, and a feed of Watch List news below. You can use the search bar to find any game — It’s powerful! Read some hints — or use the menus at top to browse our collection by platform. Thanks for checking out the site!
Hand of the Gods: SMITE Tactics was quietly removed from sale on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One back in August but for those who already owned it, the final days are upon us. Announced in late August, the game’s servers will be shut down on January 1st, 2020, making the online-only title unplayable.
The news was originally posted by developer Hi-Rez Studios on Twitter but the game’s PlayStation Store page offered a slightly more robust explanation:
Hand of the Gods will be closing its servers permanently on January 1st, 2020. After this time, Hand of the Gods will no longer be playable. We have granted all players 100,000 Runes so everyone to enjoy the game before it is shut down.
We would like to thank everyone who has played and supported Hand of the Gods since its launch, and we hope that you enjoy the final days of Hand of the Gods. While we announce this news with a heavy heart, we are proud of what we accomplished with Hand of the Gods and we sincerely appreciate all of the players who have enjoyed the game during its lifetime.
Although there isn’t much time left, I’ve added the date to the Watch List calendar and will have a page added to the site soon. Thanks again to FallenRyan for pointing this one out.
Bethesda Community Manager, Christian Van Hoose, announced in a post to the game’s subreddit on December 6th that all development on The Elder Scrolls: Legends has ceased for “the foreseeable future”. While the free-to-play deck-builder remains available on Steam and mobile platforms, the news all but seals the fate of the unreleased console versions.
It doesn’t paint a very confident picture for the future of the existing game either, although an Asia-specific mobile release, developed in conjunction with Gaea Mobile, may “inform our decisions on […] development”. Van Hoose’s post follows:
We would like to provide an update on Legends in regard to new content. Our previous roadmap indicated we would be releasing one more set this year. We decided to put any new content development or releases on hold for the foreseeable future. This decision will not in any way affect the release and development of GAEA’s Asia-specific version of Legends, which is operated separately, but will inform our decisions on content and feature development going forward.
Until then, you can still download and play Legends on all existing platforms and compete online as well as in the single-player modes. We will also continue to support the game with monthly reward cards and regular in-game events. New expansions and other future content, however, are no longer under active development. We will continue to provide ongoing maintenance support.
To thank you all for supporting Legends these past few years, and for continuing to play with us, we are giving away The Tamriel Collection – an assortment of new, three-attribute cards and more – to all players for free upon their next login. We are immensely grateful to work on The Elder Scrolls: Legends, to have you as a community, and we sincerely appreciate the love and support you’ve given us.
In response to fan concerns, Van Hoose confirmed that the decision was not based on card designs or the relationship between developer Sparkypants (who took over from Dire Wolf Digital in 2018), but gave no clearer explanation. Another reply confirmed that playerbases for the Western and Asian versions would not be merged, nor would the Asian version replace the original.
Given that the game’s player counts on Steam have been steadily dwindling despite the past few years of content, it’s not hard to see one possible reason for the decision. The game is now on the Watch List but without a confirmed date to add to the calendar, we’ll just have to keep an eye out for the inevitable bad news.
TRON: Evolution was originally delisted from Steam back in April of this year, but beginning in early October players who owned the game found that it was now unplayable if it wasn’t previously installed. After doing some digging, Steam user SillyWalk discovered that the culprit was the SecuROM DRM that Disney used to stave off piracy of the PC game since its release in 2010.
The support staff at SecuROM confirmed that “we can’t run this service anymore for Disney titles, therefore all activations are denied”. By this point other owners had also reached out to Disney about the issue, several of which received the same email explanation:
Our team is aware that the activation site for this game is no longer live and has since been shut down. At this time, if the game was not already previously installed it will no longer be able to be launched. We are looking into this hiccup and hoping to patch this in the future. However, at this time we do not have any current estimated time on when this will be.
So Disney stopped paying the maintenance fee for DRM and now their already-delisted game is even more unplayable. I’d label it as outright Unbelievable but now that it’s happened, I’m only surprised that I didn’t think of it as a delisting factor sooner. Studios incur an untold amount of fees to keep their games online, even after they’ve been removed from sale, and unfortunately, ‘DRM provider’ is just another one we are now painfully aware of.
Thanks again to The Everyday Otacon for pointing out this news.
CD Projekt Red, makers of the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 and the well-loved Witcher franchise, have announced a surprising end-of-life for the series spin-off title, GWENT. The news was posted on December 4th that the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of GWENT: The Witcher Card Game would become unplayable on June 9th, 2020.
Leading up to that date, players will have a six month window starting on December 9th in which to transfer most of their console progress over to a GOG.com account which serves as the backend for the PC and mobile versions of the game. The official post has more details on what progress will and won’t be copied over, and promises that more details about the process will be revealed on December 9th.
So, why is this being announced just one year after the game’s console release? The team promised to keep parity between all versions of the game but with five titles to maintain, the underperforming platforms are being cut loose. The announcement explains:
When we launched the console versions of GWENT back in 2017, our intention was to provide console players with the same level of support as their PC counterparts. However, having just launched GWENT on iOS, and with the Android version coming, the number of supported platforms would significantly increase. Looking to the future, we do not believe we can support a growing number of different versions of GWENT while improving feature parity between them.
Considering that PC and mobile are the most popular platforms among GWENT players, we have made a tough decision: to discontinue support of console versions of the game. All GWENT players on consoles will be offered an option to copy their account progress and purchases from their current platform to a GOG account, which is used by both PC and mobile versions of the game.
I’ll add the dates to the Watch List calendar and keep an eye out for more details between December 9th and the game’s end-of-the-road next June. Thanks to Michael Hunin and everyone else who pointed us toward this news.
There’s sad news for Japanese Rockman fans and potential bad news for the rest of the Mega Man-loving world coming up in just over a week. Capcom Unity Japan announced on November 26th that four PSone Classic Rockman releases will be removed from sale on December 13th. Those being Rockman 8, Rockman X4, Rockman X5 and Tron Ni Kobun (aka The Misadventures of Tron Bonne).
As Rockman Corner points out, three of the titles are still available to download in other Mega Man/Rockman collections but with the removal of Tron Ni Kobun, there will be no legitimate way to play this one or its PocketStation Kobun mini-games in Japan. The bad news for the Western world is that Capcom has yet to confirm if these delistings will extend to North American where the games are still available to download individually.
Some speculation suggests that the Japanese delistings could be tied to specific vocal performances. This could potentially keep the English language releases safe but if you’ve ever been interested in these games you might want to grab them soon, just in case. Thanks to The Everyday Otacon for pointing this one out.
