Whether due to publisher deals gone sour, licenses expiring, feuds between developer and publisher and other reasons entirely, there’s a wide range of games that you just can’t buy digitally anymore, and I’m gonna talk about the biggest missing bangers from my mash.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1+2
Last Seen: July 26th, 2018
Cause Of Disappearance: Expired licenses
Marvel games have almost always been prime candidates for deletion, usually due to a change in publisher rights. Fun stuff. Alwaaaays fun.
The main culprit of this was Activision, who at one point had almost free rein to create as many Marvel related games as they liked. Through this, you had plenty of Spider-Man games that have slipped through the cracks, such as Shattered Dimensions and Web Of Shadows, along with the underrated Deadpool standalone game, but perhaps the biggest individual losses come from the delisting of Marvel Ultimate Alliance and its sequel.
A team-focused action RPG, the Ultimate Alliance games lived up to their name by allowing players to form their own quartet of Marvel heroes to take on the length and breadth of the Marvel rogues gallery. The first game functioned like a whistle stop tour of recognisable Marvel locales, while the sequel retold the iconic Civil War storyline, and while both games were re-released on PS4 and Xbox One, they were delisted due to the expiration of the publisher agreement not too long afterwards. You can get the third game still, but it’s weirdly exclusive to Switch still after all these years. Is it ever gonna cross that Nintendo picket…line?
Spec Ops: The Line
Last Seen: January 29th, 2024
Cause Of Disappearance: “Partnership licenses expiring”
The most recent disappearance and arguably most readily available game still on this list, Spec Ops: The Line was removed from all digital storefronts around the start of 2024, with the briefest of statements from 2K Games citing the expiration of a number of partner licenses. The idea that one of the most politically charged and brain-breaking military shooter games could be brought down by just a few licensed music tracks seems ridiculous…but that’s the world of video games we live in right now.
Music licenses have led to games being delisted in the past, but that fate is usually reserved for the likes of sports or racing games. Some games have even just removed the offending songs in question in order to keep selling said game, but for Spec Ops: The Line, 2K seemingly decided they’d rather yeet the whole game than try to preserve a truly defining classic.
If you own an Xbox One or Xbox Series X, you can still pick up an Xbox 360 copy of Spec Ops, but as time goes on, those copies are going to become a lot more scarce and those prices are only just going to go up. Crazy considering how cheap the game used to be, really. I refuser to pay like 5 times the price.
Fuser
Last Seen: December 19th, 2022
Cause Of Disappearance: Unknown, possibly due to Harmonix’s purchase by Epic
Harmonix has been pioneering the music/rhythm genre of gaming for nearly two decades at this point, with their work on Guitar Hero and subsequently Rock Band kickstarting a whole wave of plastic tat that gathers dust in your cupboard. More recently though, Harmonix tried their hand at the role of DJ with Fuser, an ambitious project that has now been lost to time. Basically, players could create their own mash-ups in real-time, picking from different elements of a bunch of songs to birth something beautiful or cursed, depending on your preference. It was pretty neat but equally niche.
Whether it was due to low player counts or the fact that Harmonix was bought out by Epic Games, even though Fuser was published by NCSoft, the decision was made to pull the plug in December of 2022. However, Fuser is one of the few cases on this list where there’s a bit of a redemption arc, as Harmonix were able to put the work they did on Fuser to action as part of Fortnite Festival, which lets four players join together to create mashups, and it’s probably the most underrated feature in all of Fortnite.
However, in Fuser, I didn’t have to deal with an ocean of children wearing Ice Spice skins and forcing me to be consciously aware of what a “Dougie” is. Girls & Boys these days, I mean really.
Blur
Last Seen: January 2013
Cause Of Disappearance: Closure of developer, car licenses expiring
Oh, Bizarre Creations. Rest in peace you absolute legends.
The Liverpool-based firm were the creators of some excellent racing games over the years, including Metropolis Street Racer for the Dreamcast, which would eventually morph into the beloved Project Gotham Racing franchise for the OG Xbox. Before their untimely closure in 2010, they managed to release an arcade racer unlike any other: Blur.
Ostensibly Mario Kart with licensed vehicles, players would choose from various cars from the likes of Dodge, Nissan, Ford and BMW among others, and would race around different exotic locations. Barcelona? Sure. Los Angeles? Absolutely. Brighton Beach? Um, if you insist, Blur. The real twist however was the power-up that would allow players to gain the upper hand on their opponents, with each power looking like a coloured soundwave. It was super stupid, but also super fun. So of course it did much worse than it deserved. If synesthesia was a racing game, it’d be Blur, but between Bizarre shutting down and the licenses expiring, Blur has become harder to remember for some than the storyline of the next entry.
Something about Jeff Bezos? No idea.
Mortal Kombat (2011)
Last Seen: March-April 2020
Cause Of Disappearance: Discontinuation of online services
Another candidate in the egregious deletions category, 2011’s Mortal Kombat (also known as Mortal Kombat 9) was a welcome return to form for the ailing fighting game franchise, especially after its…rocky pivot into 3D fighting. Those PS2 games might have sold well, but they, largely speaking apart from the beloved, didn’t play too well compared to Tekken and Virtua Fighter. And let’s be honest, they were no Rumble Roses.
Anyway, once Midway collapsed and the team behind Mortal Kombat were able to regroup as NetherRealm Studios, they released the excellent 2011 reboot, which still stands as the best game in the entire franchise. We will die on this hill, don’t try to stop us. We might do a roll. A threatening roll.
Mortal Kombat had a good run of nine years, still being supported on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC up until 2020, despite the releases of Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11. However, in 2020, Warner Bros. ultimately pulled the plug on Mortal Kombat, removing it from sale citing the discontinuation of online services for the game. While the online portion of a fighting game is arguably the most important, Mortal Kombat’s story and Challenge Tower with all 300 of its unique missions have also been lost to digital time.
It’s enough to driver you around the bend!
Driver: San Francisco
Last Seen: July-December 2016
Cause Of Disappearance: Either car or music licenses expiring
Another single-player focused experience that’s been completely erased from all digital storefronts, Driver: San Francisco is arguably the best game in the franchise. Which makes it all the sadder that it was the last home console Driver game, and also the first really good one since the PS1!
A tongue in cheek detective story told through an open-world driving/racing game, Driver: San Francisco boasted a feature that set it apart from anything else on the market: hotswapping. At any time, players could just leap out of the driver’s body, leaving them suspended in midair like some playable Google Maps, before picking another car and taking control of that driver.
It was an utterly brilliant mechanic that made you rethink how you’d approach standard objectives. Usually, you’d just control a bunch of cars and use them to take out your competition in a race, but it was still unlike any other experience. Unfortunately, the licensed cars and music got to it, as they always do, with Driver: San Francisco being removed from all digital storefronts throughout 2016. Weirdly, people could still get hold of UPlay PC keys for a few years afterwards through GameStop, but these days, you’ll need to hunt down a physical copy, or maybe win a key in a poker game.
Poker Night 1 & 2
Last Seen: September 11th, 2018 (PN2), May 23rd, 2019 (PN1)
Cause Of Disappearance: Expiration of digital distribution agreements
Recounting the entire history of Telltale Games would take up too much time and could maybe be a video all its own, so here’s the cliffnotes version instead. After making it big with adaptations of Minecraft and The Walking Dead, Telltale stretched itself too thin and imploded in 2018. Naturally, all the licensed games were removed too. While most have made a comeback alongside Telltale’s resurrection, including The Walking Dead, some haven’t, including Telltale’s most interesting games: Poker Night At The Inventory and Poker Night 2.
As the name would imply, Poker Night is about having a game of cards with your buddies, but those buddies just so happen to be characters from various forms of media over the years. The first Poker Night featured internet favorites like Strong Bad and the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, but Poker Night 2 upped the ante with Ash Williams, Brock Samson from The Venture Bros. and Claptrap. Oh, and your dealer is Glados.
Both games were mainly comedic and were designed around funny banter above all else, but they’re charming curios that have since been lost to time. Telltale did actually come back not long ago, releasing an episodic adaptation of The Expanse, a cult hit sci-fi series that had previously been cancelled, and yes, it did about as well as you’d expect. That’s more brutal than the reception to trying to shill Real American Beer!
WWE All Stars
Last Seen: 2016
Cause Of Disappearance: Unknown, likely due to expired publisher agreement or likeness
The WWE franchise of games could fill an AWOL games video on their own at this point, as could many annual release sports games. All of them are prime candidates for delisting as far as publishers are concerned, due to the various music, logo and likeness licenses involved, along with the march of progress towards next year’s installment. WWE games are no exception to those rules, but when you’ve got a game like WWE All Stars, which broke the mold of traditional wrestling games to create something over the top and ridiculous, that loss stings all the more.
Embracing that larger than life aura that WWE loves to cultivate as a brand, WWE All Stars beefed everyone up to cartoonish proportions and stuck the wrestlers in a game with 20 ft leaping powerbombs and juggle combos. Compared to the slower paced, simulation focused WWE games of 2K15 to 2K20, WWE All Stars felt like four player Tekken and unlike all other wrestling games at the time. Because WWE is an ever changing beast, and a good portion of All Stars’ roster has either left the company or has had some kind of career ending disgrace emerge about them, we’ll never get this game relisted. However, a new WWE All Stars would hit like a chop from GUNTHER. But it seems that after 2K Battlegrounds stank the gaff out worse than Hulk Hogan in a public place in 2025, the silly side of WWE video games is in bad company. 1. And 2!
Battlefield: Bad Company 1 + 2
Last Seen: December 8th, 2023
Cause Of Disappearance: “Retirement of online services”
EA and DICE’s penchant for taking Battlefield games completely offline is a bit baffling, especially when you consider that the majority of the BF games don’t even use official gun licensing. At least with games like BF 1943, which only offered online multiplayer, you can make the excuse that you’re cutting costs because there’s few players, but they’ve also completely removed games like Bad Company and its sequel, Bad Company 2.
Arguably the breakout series for Battlefield for a lot of players, the Bad Company games maintained the large scale warzone of chaos that the Battlefield series had become synonymous with. Especially compared to the more “get shot by the same angry Scottish teenager sixteen times in the same corridor” experience in COD. However, the real shining gem of both games was the campaign, following a ragtag group of former prisoners forced to work for the US army. While the first game was much more light-hearted in its tone, Bad Company 2 became a megahit for the franchise and still has probably the best campaign the franchise has ever seen. Not hard when your modern opponent does not…exist.
Both Bad Company games are still available physically on console, but for the vast majority of players, they’re lost to history. Maybe forever?
No One Lives Forever 1 and 2
Jimmy’s already rabbited on about this franchise in a recent video, and afterwards he remembered just how much he missed it. So…now he’s making me rabbit on about it too.
But No One Lives Forever really does deserve to be remembered as one of the best FPS games ever.
No One Lives Forever is very much a forgotten bit of FPS royalty. The first game was released in 2000 for PC, and then 2002 in a very decent PS2 port. Following Cate Archer as she does spy stuff all sneakily like, No One Lives Forever is a kitschy slice of 60s espionage with great shooting, a knee slapper of a soundtrack, and tonnes of different tools at your disposal.
The game’s mix of revolutionary graphics, physics, smart AI, and a funny sense of humour made it an immediate hit, and it felt right at home alongside your Goldeneyes and your Half-Lifes. It was followed up by No One Lives Forever 2, and even had a prequel spin-off by the name of Contract Jack in 2003. The NOLF universe was pretty healthy for a minute there.
However, as the entire series predated Steam, it was only ever sold physically. The rights are apparently also shared between Fox, Activision, and Warner Bros, so you’ve got about as much chance of them all working together as Jimmy does of reaching the top shelf in Asda.
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