The Deus Ex remaster that everyone thinks looks awful is delayed, there’s no new release date, and preorders are being refunded

An official remaster of the brilliant, groundbreaking immersive sim Deus Ex was announced a few months ago, with a release date of February 5, 2026. But with that date now less than two months away, and fans decidedly unhappy about the whole thing, developer Aspyr has opted for a delay to some unspecified new date.

“Thank you to the community for your feedback following the reveal of Deus Ex Remastered,” Aspyr wrote on X. “We’ve listened to what you said, and in order to better meet fan expectations and deliver the best possible experience for players, Deus Ex Remastered will no longer launch on Feb. 5, 2026.

“We look forward to sharing more updates with you when the time comes. All existing preorders will be fully refunded. Thank you again for your patience and support.”

A delay is one thing, but a delay without even a hint of a new release target, and preorder refunds to boot? That’s trouble. And the root of it, no doubt, is the “feedback” Aspyr referenced in its delay message.

As PC Gamer remaster sicko Joshua Wolens pointed out shortly after the Deus Ex do-over was announced, everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they’re right. “Everyone” in this case includes original Deus Ex art directory Jerry O’Flaherty, who said—and I quote—”Oh, what the fuck.”

I’m not a big remaster guy like Josh, but I am something of a Deus Ex sicko, and my reaction was in perfect alignment with all the rest: This looks awful. Adding insult to injury, the remaster was priced at $30, which is more than fair for a game of Deus Ex quality except that you can get the Game of the Year edition on Steam or GOG for a fraction of that—a very small fraction of that, given that it pretty regularly goes on sale for $1.

And sure, it looks old, but it still looks better than a game that, in the words of fellow DX freak Ted Litchfield, “eviscerates the original’s memorable vision of the mid-21st century, replacing it with shiny, aggressively normal-mapped surfaces lifted straight from the OG Xbox/360 era, and character models who wandered in from Xavier Renegade Angel.”

He has a way with words, our Ted.

The Deus Ex botch is the latest unpredictable maneuver from Aspyr, a remake studio famous for veering between catastrophes like the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection and the excellent Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition. And it’s got a real mess on its hands here: The Deus Ex remaster had to be fairly well along to be set for release less than five months after it was revealed, which suggests there’s a lot of work to undo—and then redo.

Credit to Aspyr for not just sending it out to die, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the Deus Ex remaster project ends up in the same file drawer as the KOTOR remake: Maybe someday, yeah, but maybe not, too.