Star Trek Legends is going away for good, and buying it will not save you. Tilting Point is pulling the role-playing game from digital stores on 20 August, then taking the servers down on 3 September. After that it stops working, including for everyone who already paid.
It is still on sale on Steam right now at 19.99 dollars, with roughly a month left on the clock.
The two dates that matter
First comes delisting. From 20 August you can no longer buy it, and it disappears from the storefronts.
Then comes the real one. On 3 September the servers go dark and the game stops working for good. Tilting Point has not given a reason, though the pattern across other Star Trek games points at expiring licences.
The console versions went quietly months ago, at a time when Sony was already defending its move away from discs. PlayStation, Xbox and Switch owners already lost the listing earlier this year, so the PC shutdown closes the last door.
Star Trek Legends had offline content too
This is the part players are angriest about, and it is the part that makes the story worth telling.
Plenty of live games shut down. Usually the argument is simple: the servers ran the game, the servers cost money, so the game ends. Fair enough.
Star Trek Legends is not only that. It carries a substantial single-player campaign that people bought and played alone. None of that needs a server to function, and all of it is going anyway.
So a purchase made last year turns into nothing on a fixed date, for reasons that have nothing to do with running costs. Developer Emerald City Games built something that would still run offline. The licence, not the technology, is what ends it.
It lands in a strange week
The timing is almost too neat.
Earlier today we covered a leaked Microsoft roadmap in Xbox Disc to Digital Could Arrive This Month, which would let players convert game discs they already own into digital licences so their collections outlive the disc drive. The pitch there is permanence.
This is the same argument from the other end. When there is no disc, no offline installer and no licence renewal, permanence is whatever the publisher decides it is that year.
If you own it, the practical advice is short. Play it before 3 September, because there will be no version of this game to go back to afterwards. The report that broke the schedule confirms both dates.
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