Corporate entertainment giant Warner Bros. Discovery has started sending notices to developers behind it Video games published by Adult Swim that their creations will be delisted and removed from digital stores in the next 60 days. While the company has not yet confirmed what will happen to nearly 20 Adult Swim titles currently available on Steam, the future of the games is as follows Mega Coin Squad, WastedAnd Headlander is suddenly much less safe.
Adult Swim Games launched in 2011. It was a video game publisher funded and operated by Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s mature, long-running animated programming block. The station became popular in the early 2000s with late night hits like… Venture Bros, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, And Harvey Birdman. Adult Swim Games went on to release some really great games, including Double Fine Headlander, Rain world, Kingsway, Volgar the Viking, And Combat Cooking Brigade. However, the publishing house has been largely dormant in recent years. His last published title Was Samurai Jack: Fighting Through Time in 2020. According to a Vice reportAdult Swim Games helped with financing Ray’s The Dead– an indie Zombie Pikmin-esque – but didn’t release it and exited game development around 2019. And now Adult Swim’s parent company WB Discovery is planning to pull titles due to “business changes,” according to three different developers .
News about WB’s plans to remove adult swimming games came March 5 via a tweet from developer Owen Deery. He explained that WB contacted him and informed him that his game, published by Adult Swim, was being “pulled out.” Small radios, large televisions from both Steam and PS4. Speak with Game developerDeery explained that the email was not a “discussion” but a “legal notice.”
“As far as the impact on me, it’s kind of depressing,” Deery said. “I’m very proud of the game but I can understand why they did it. Swimming games for adults haven’t really been around for many years and everyone I worked with at the publisher has long since moved on to other places. If you work with purely digital products, nothing will last very long.”
Game developer also reported that it had seen a copy of the email Deery received and shared the text it contained:
Timeline: Hiring is planned within the next 60 days. During this period we will be removing the game from both the Steam and PS4 platforms.
Support: Our customer service team will be notified of the discontinuation date and provided with prepared responses should users contact us. […]Thank you for your contribution to our games library and your understanding during this transition. For questions we are happy to help.
Other popular games will soon be removed from the list
Over the next few days, two more developers publicly confirmed that their Adult Swim-published titles had also been removed from digital stores after receiving similar emails.
Developer Michael Molinari announced on March 7th that he was also contacted by WB Discovery and told that his game, published by Adult Swim, Soundodger+would be removed from Steam “within the next 60 days.”
Molinari told Polygon that WB refused to transfer ownership of the Steam release to him, even after he sent the company the information he needed to give him control of it Soundodger+. Molinari told the outlet that a Warner Bros. Discovery representative said the decision to refuse to transfer ownership back to the developers was “due to logistics and resource constraints” and “the limited capacity of our team.” Polygon was told by a developer that the current Adult Swim Games team is a “skeleton crew.”
Instead, Molinari has to re-release the game on Steam and loses all wishlists and reviews in the process. He also says that WB Discovery is forcing him to remove all mention of Adult Swim from the game and its credits.
“I’m all for preserving games and that’s not the most important thing,” Molinari added in a follow-up tweet.
At least one other game published by Adult Swim is set to be removed from Steam: Fisticuffs. According to a March 6 post on Steam The studio received a communication from Warner Bros. Discovery about it from one of the game’s developers, Matt Kain Lewandowski Fisticuffs “will be retired and removed from Steam in the next 60 days.”
Like with Soundodger+, WB is reportedly refusing to transfer ownership of Steam games to developers using Valve’s user-friendly process.
“This is incredibly disappointing,” said Lewandowski. “I’m not entirely sure what will happen if the game is delisted, but it makes me sick to think that purchased games will probably be removed from users’ libraries. Our community and players have over 10 years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam Achievements, Steam Cards, etc., all of which could be lost. We have Kickstarter backers who helped with funding Fisticuffs (even some who make cameo appearances in the game) who eventually won’t be able to play it anymore.”
In the past, games that were delisted could still be downloaded and played again by owners of the title even if they were removed from digital stores. However, this is not always the case. My city has contacted WB Games and Adult Swim Games regarding the situation.
Lewandowski said Polygon that they continue to demand control over them Fisticuffs on Steam and have a plan in place if they are unable to purchase the original release.
“That is, if we don’t get the current version of Fisticuffs “If the game was transferred to us, we will probably re-release it on our own account,” Lewandowski said. “We still own the game and the IP, so a re-release is definitely possible. And as someone who is passionate about preserving gaming history, I hate to see a game lost to corporate bureaucracy.”
Andrew Morrish, another developer behind two adult swimming games –Kingsway And Super puzzle platformer-told Polygon that he expected to be contacted by WB Discovery “soon,” adding, “It’s not looking good.”
Not all swimming games for adults remained with the publisher. Some like Rain World, Battle Chef Brigade, And Westerado New publishers were found or developers took back control of the games years after release.
According to SteamDB they still exist There are currently 19 games available on Steam published by Adult Swim. It’s possible that in the next 60 days some or all of these stocks will be delisted by a greedy company that only cares about growth and shareholders and will do whatever it takes –including deleting movies before publication And Shutting down popular online businesses like Rooster Teeth– to increase the numbers and please some of the worst and richest people in the world. And while many of the games delisted will return, there’s no guarantee that they will all return, and none of them will be the original versions that people bought years ago. It’s a shitty situation and another example of why massive corporate mergers should be stopped.
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