Electronic Arts has ordered GOG.com to remove four of its games from the game store. Those are Ultima Underworld 1+2, Syndicate Plus and Syndicate Wars. The latter will soon no longer be available new, digitally.
“We would like to inform you that, at the request of the publisher, these games will no longer be available in our game store as of Monday, June 28,” tells GOG in the brief announcement of the change. Electronic Arts is the publisher of all four games. The games and game set are currently discounted and cost 1.29 euros each.
Both parts of Ultima Underworld and the first Syndicate can be found on Origin, EA’s own online store. As far as the availability of those games is concerned, there is less going on, but the question is to what extent those versions are the same. GOG not only makes the games available, but also tinkers with them to make them playable on many different operating systems and hardware. They are also DRM-free at GOG and even incorporate fan-made patches in the games if necessary. GOG talked about the process of ‘restoring’ old games in a documentary, produced by Noclip, in 2018.
In addition to Syndicate Wars, Syndicate’s American Revolt expansion is also not for sale on Origin. EA may bring the missing game and expansion to Origin at a later time. Nothing is known about this at the moment. At least Kotaku has EA asked for a comment, but has had no response at the time of this writing.
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