Spec Ops: The Line has suddenly been removed from Steam without any explanation, causing confusion even for the director of the game.
Spec Ops: The Line is a third-person shooter developed by Yager and released in 2012. Now, the popular standout title has suddenly been removed from Steam, without any warning or explanation. The Steam page for the game now has a message at the top, saying: “Notice: Spec Ops: The Line is no longer available on the Steam store.”
Spec Ops: The Line Suddenly Removed From Steam
The sudden nature of this has left many people baffled, including the game’s director Cory Davis. He commented the whole situation by saying that it “makes no sense” and that the game is still relevant today.
Makes no sense - especially because the themes portrayed in @SpecOpsTheLine are more relevant now than ever. Why has this happened @2k @Steam ? https://t.co/BnHnxzQRPp
— Cory Davis (@Snak3Fist) January 30, 2024
One possible reason for the removal is that music licenses have expired, which causes games to be removed from time to time. Spec Ops features quite a lot of licensed music from artists like Jimi Hendrix, Alice in Chains or Mogwai.
Despite a terribly generic name, Spec Ops: The Line was anything but. The shooter set in Dubai stood out within the crowded shooter market with some clever gameplay ideas and especially through an excellently told story, which emphasized the grittiness and the horrors of warfare and which interrogated player agency and violence in video games in ways that were very rare back then, especially in the shooter genre.
Weirdly, the game is still available on other platforms, like GoG and key resellers. However, sites like Nuuvem have started to remove the game from their stores as well, so it can be expected that even more platforms will follow suit.
So far, publisher 2K has not given any explanation and has not responded to requests for comment.