2K pulls Spec Ops: The Line from digital stores without warning
2K pulls Spec Ops: The Line from digital stores without warning
"The themes portrayed in Spec Ops: The Line are more relevant now than ever," the game’s director said.
Unfortunately, the news that it won’t be available digitally is a huge blow to the game’s availability.
If only there were other, off-market alternatives for acquiring video games that aren't subjected to licensing agreements... 🤔
Paying a sketchy dude with Bitcoin who arranges a carrier pigeon USB stick drop to your window at 3 AM?
IP over Avian Carriers strikes again!
I would actually pay for that. Sounds fucking awesome.
I knew it wasn't just me that buys from Greasy Bob!
Yo ho, yo ho...
Oh god, it's 2K publishing.
Which means that the game disappearing from storefronts is one of the better case scenarios. It's entirely possible that they'll patch out the licenced songs from the soundtrack from every digital copy of the game.
That's why I buy on GOG. There I can pull the installer for a game and hoard it when I know the next update is going to go bad.
It’s still available on GoG.
Good old gog aka gogog
Unfortunately it’s gone from there now too
Haha, online games licensing sucks. It's almost as if, when we discovered we could distribute media freely and infinitely by digital means, we should have restructured how media and licensing works for these products. but we didn't, and now we have bizarre situations where publishers try to delete their own games from existence rather than spend some upkeep for music licensing
Like I agree with your general point but this has nothing to do with online games licensing besides its being pulled from digital store fronts. Brick and mortar stores can have product recalls as well and this would likely be in that same category of problem (its a bit weird with preowned games since publishers were already given their cut) so they can continue to sell those but a brand "new" copy may have suffered a similar fate but we have to remember Spec Ops the Line is from the 360 era so I doubt there would even been many "new" copies around. Also I can't fault publishers from just "deleting" a game from existence because spending thousands for merely upkeeping the licenses for a game they realistically haven't sold in major volumes for nearly half a decade (at minimum) seems a tad bit unreasonable. Most music labels likely aren't even going to sell a perpetual license as well, so its a can of worms of people wanting to get their cut.
Music rights again?
I’m assuming people who already bought the game can still play it?
It's still in my Steam library. I'm not sure whether it runs, but I can't imagine it wouldn't.
They should be able to. These things usually only take them down from sale.
Can confirm, was able to download it after it was pulled and it runs fine.