Asmosdee’s Pandemic digital board game has been quietly pulled from sale “for a variety of reasons [the publisher] cannot be detected.”

Without an official announcement, Pandemic was pulled from Steam on January 6th, and it looks like players won’t be able to pick it up on mobile devices either (although if you already own the game, you should be able to redownload it from your library if you’re quick). All game references have been removed from the company’s website.

the note Steam simply states “At the publisher’s request, Pandemic: The Board Game is no longer available for sale on Steam”. Players on Xbox and Nintendo Switch have until the end of January 2022 and July 2022 respectively to grab it before it is removed from those stores as well.

Although there was no official explanation, one of the players contacted Asmodee and claimed received This curious email in reply (thanks, player on pc):

“First we would like to thank you and all Pandemic players for their loyalty and support over time. Unfortunately, we are in the process of removing the Pandemic app from stores. We have been working hard on Pandemic for four years and have pulled it off stores. It was not an easy choice, this decision was made with a heavy heart for several Reasons we cannot disclose.

“For now, only PC, App Store and Google Play have been removed. A Microsoft release will follow on January 31, 2022, and then a Nintendo Switch by the end of July 2022.

“For the game, as long as it was purchased and downloaded before being removed from the store, you will continue to access the game. If you uninstall the game, you will need to access your library to locate and install the game again.”

“It is hard to overstate the impact of the pandemic on board games,” we said in 2016, when no one really knew what the word pandemic meant or how it would affect. Different Kind of an impact on gaming in 2020.

“This game, in which players work together to save the world from an epidemic of deadly diseases, is the most successful cooperative board game of the past 10 years, and perhaps of all time. Released in 2007, it is a combination of a simple, accessible rule set framed around a challenging puzzle. Unexpected proved successful with casual and amateur board players alike, and proved to both communities that playing together can be as entertaining as playing competitively.”