Star Trek: Resurgence is gone. The narrative adventure game from former Telltale developers has been pulled from Steam and Xbox with less than 24 hours notice, the victim of an expired license that neither Paramount nor publisher Bruner House moved to renew.
The announcement came on April 14 via a brief Steam community post. “Our license to distribute Star Trek: Resurgence has come to an end, so the game will no longer be offered for sale,” the statement read. “Existing customers can continue to access the game via their Steam library. Thanks to everyone who was able to enjoy the game!” The game vanished from Steam within hours. The Xbox Store followed. As of April 15, it remains available on the Epic Games Store, Nintendo eShop, and PlayStation Store, but those storefronts are expected to follow.
The timing made it worse. Star Trek: Resurgence had been part of an active Steam sale when the delisting notice went up. Players who bought the game at a discount one day found it gone the next. Fans noted that Bruner House and Dramatic Labs almost certainly knew the license end date well in advance. They said nothing.
The game itself earned its audience. On OpenCritic, it sits at a 71 average from critics. On Steam, it held a “Very Positive” rating from more than 3,000 user reviews. The studio behind it, Dramatic Labs, was founded by over 20 former Telltale employees after that company’s sudden 2018 collapse. They built a game that reviewers consistently praised for its authentic Trek feel, its character writing, and its narrative structure. It sold between 50,000 and 100,000 copies on Steam alone, after launching as an Epic exclusive.
Resurgence launched in May 2023. It lived on storefronts for less than three years before Paramount let the deal expire.
Reports from the GamingOnLinux community suggest Paramount and Skydance raised Star Trek licensing costs by 2,000% for renewal negotiations, a number that would explain why a small studio and boutique publisher had no path to a new deal. Paramount has not confirmed or denied those figures.
This lands at an already low moment for the franchise. Paramount canceled Star Trek: Starfleet Academy before its second season could air. Strange New Worlds is being wound down after Season 5. For the first time in years, no Trek television series is in active development. The Kurtzman era, which promised a streaming-era expansion of the franchise, produced shows that failed to build a durable audience and a licensing regime that is now pricing out the developers who tried to fill the gap.
The game does have physical media discs, but those are selling out rapidly and going for exorbitant prices on eBay already.
A franchise that should be generating additional products and audience goodwill at its 60th anniversary is instead contracting on every front.
What do you think of how Paramount has managed the Star Trek brand? Let us know in the comments.
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2000% licence increase is just cancellation with whatever legal language there is for cancellation sidestepped.
This is extremely good news.
It means they are assuming direct control of the franchise. Can't have odd bits of 15+ years of awful Star Trek floating around rubbing its filthy stink all over whatever hail Mary they're planning.
Excise it all.
Seems promising to me. Stop everything cold.
Restart it all from scratch. The right way.
Ellison glows about the Star Trek IP; he's not happy with "modern" Trek.