One Must Fall 2197: Singularity came out on Steam on October 22. On November 3, its developer asked Valve to take it down.
LineCrush Games, which describes itself as "a small studio that's still new to making video games," posted the news on Steam (via Delisted Games): "After a hard look at One Must Fall 2197: Singularity, we don't think we made this one good enough, so we've asked Steam to take it off the store."
Developers rarely say that out loud. Most just leave the game up and stop patching it.
What was it?
A free HD remake of One Must Fall 2097, the 1994 robot fighting game from Rob Elam and Diversions Entertainment, published by Epic MegaGames back when Epic still had "Mega" in its name. The original went freeware in 1999, which is what made a free remake possible.
According to its Steam page, Singularity ran on OpenOMF, the open-source reimplementation fans have been building since 2013, with an Unreal Engine remaster on top. It had all eleven original robots plus ten new ones, fifteen arenas, a tournament career mode, and online versus with Steam friends using rollback netcode.
It also leaned heavily on generative AI, and said so. The store page's disclosure says the 3D robots, arenas and animation were made with AI-assisted image-to-3D and image generation tools, then repaired by hand. The menu art was AI-remastered, the store art was AI-generated, the trailer shots came from Runway, and the new soundtrack was composed with ElevenLabs.
LineCrush didn't cite the AI work as a reason for pulling it. It said only that the game wasn't good enough.
How did it do?
Not well. As of November 4 the Steam page shows Mixed reviews, with 40% of 15 user reviews positive. Steam's public player count showed one person playing at about 5:20 a.m. Arizona time.
Can I still play One Must Fall 2197: Singularity?
Yes, if you already grabbed it. LineCrush says the game stays in your library and you can keep playing. It was free, so as the studio put it, "nobody is out any money."
If you don't have it, you may still be able to claim it until Valve processes the removal. No exact date has been announced, and as of this morning the store page is still live.
Online versus works peer to peer between Steam friends, so it doesn't depend on a dedicated server being switched off. LineCrush hasn't said whether it will keep patching it after removal.
What if I just want to play One Must Fall 2097?
That's the easy part. The original is freeware, and OpenOMF, the engine Singularity was built on, is free and open source. The remake is going away. The game it remade has been fine since 1994.
Sources
- LineCrush Games announcement, via Delisted Games (Nov 4, 2026)
- Steam store page (checked Nov 4, 2026)
- OpenOMF project
Published Nov 4, 2026. Based on LineCrush Games' Nov 3 Steam announcement as quoted by Delisted Games, and a Nov 4 check of the game's Steam store page. Card: Deadgames.gg house art.