I have been anxiously awaiting the release of Open Country from FUN Labs and 505 Games. I admittedly discovered the game very recently, but I started getting pretty amped after I did a little bit of sleuthing to see what I could uncover about this upcoming open-world survival/hunting game. And with its June 3 release date just around the corner, the stars were seemingly lining up for my early-summer enjoyment.
But then, just after the hype train left the station, it vanished. Open Country vanished, I mean — the verdict’s still out on the hype train.
After a recent Google search, I stumbled upon something a little bizarre; Google still had May 18 pegged as the game’s release date. Although that was the intended release date at some point, Open Country has more recently been pushed back to June — no biggie, because I didn’t even know it existed back when the May date was first announced. But the June 3 date is more than ten days old at this point. The all-knowing Google should have figured this out by now, right?
So I hopped on over to Steam to see if there were any updates — or, better yet, a freshly launched game for me to purchase.
This is when I discovered unsettling fact number two: Open Country is no longer listed on the Steam storefront. And I don’t mean that the release date changed to the infuriatingly vague TBD; no, the whole game seems to have been completely removed. If you do a search on Steam, Open Country doesn’t pop up anymore. If you visit the Open Country website and click on the “Wishlist” link, it just reroutes you to the Steam homepage.
I looked for the game on the PlayStation and Xbox storefronts to no avail, though I suppose this isn’t surprising.
Next I tried GameStop and Amazon to see what the status of any physical version, but that only resulted in more confusion. GameStop has a September 30 release date listed for Xbox One, and Amazon says September 28 for PS4.
Have I just stumbled into the biggest hoax even committed against the American people? Am I now putting my life in danger by breaking this all wide open?
As you can imagine, I was sweating buckets at this point, so I reached out to Half-Glass Gaming owner and editor-in-chief, JW (or just Josh, as he’s sometimes known).
In typical Josh fashion, he did some intrepid journalism, jumping into the Open Country Discord channel and asking the hard questions. The response he got? Apparently they’re just having some issues with the Steam listing and the June 3 date still stands for the digital release of Open Country. We’re still waiting on whether or not the September date is a physical-only thing or just a mistake.
Needless to say, I was impressed. I will continue to follow this story closely, if for no other reason than I really would like to play Open Country on June 3.
