In 2019, Obsidian Entertainment’s niche 2010 espionage game, Alpha Protocol, was delisted from Steam out of nowhere and it left plenty of people very confused. That is until the journalists poked around, assuming it the game’s delisting had to do with its soundtrack, which featured Turn Up The Radio by Autograph during the final boss, and that turned out to be the exact reason. Unfortunately, licensing music isn’t a one-and-done deal — licenses have to be renewed. Odds are Sega, which published the game, didn’t see enough sales to keep it alive and just let it go the way of the wind.
Imagine the shock of fans, though, when CD Projekt-owned game selling platform GOG revealed it has revived the game five years later. A YouTube video popped up on the seller’s channel confirming this. The game isn’t a full one-to-one, it does have some stuff altered, like full controller support, a full achievement list, which was previously only available on console, and the licensed soundtrack. It’s also currently on sale until April 3, giving interested players plenty of time to get 10% off the game, slashing its $19.99 price tag down to $17.99.
GOG has a long history of bringing games from yesteryear back to modern systems, as well as taking feedback from the community and attempting to revive dead games from the ashes and throwing them into a new audience of retro-hungry gamers.
Frankly, it’s nice to see a game come back from the dead, here’s hoping the same will happen with the since-delisted Spec Ops: The Line. Considering it took five years for Alpha Protocol to come back with the whole package, and this was just a niche Sega-published title, rather than Spec Ops, which was a huge cultural hit, we’d be surprised if it comes back in the next few years.
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GWare is a gaming industry reporter with over five years of experience and a massive supporter of ethical game preservation efforts.