Square Enix has announced that JRPG The Last Remnant, which was released almost ten years ago in April 2009, will get delisted from Steam tomorrow and removed from sale. Physical sales will also be stopped, and presumably console versions will be removed too.
Fortunately, much like other games that have been delisted from Steam, anyone who owns The Last Remnant and has it in their Steam library will still be able to install and play after tomorrow. No one else will be able to buy it, however.
Square Enix has kindly provided the exact times when the game will be removed. The delisting will take place on Tuesday September 4 at 10:00 PDT / 17:00 GMT, and 02:00 JST the following morning of September 5. So less than 18 hours from now, as we write this.
They announced all this on the game’s Steam page, but the bigger question is why The Last Remnant is being delisted in the first place. Square Enix owns all rights to the title, so there are no licensing issues in that regard, unlike the Transformers or Marvel games. Some fans have suggested that the removal could be down to music licensing issues, or problems with the Unreal Engine that the game uses.
Either way it’s a bit of a mystery, especially as Square Enix has been making such good effort to put as many past RPGs on Steam as possible. Still, at least they gave some warning to allow potential players one last chance to pick The Last Remnant up, unlike Activision who routinely pull games from Steam without any advance notice.
If you’re not aware of it, The Last Remnant was released on 2009 on PC and 2008 on Xbox 360, and was part of a drive to release more JRPGs on Microsoft’s console and so pull in more a Japanese audience, who didn’t want anything to do with the Xbox. It was made by developers who’d worked on the SaGa and Final Fantasy games, but didn’t make much of a splash.
Nevertheless, the game’s Steam reviews stand at ‘Very Positive,’ so it clearly has a devoted audience. If you want to be part of that audience, even if you don’t plan on playing The Last Remnant immediately, we suggest you pick up the game now – because by this time tomorrow it’ll be gone forever.