Corporate entertainment giant Warner Bros. Discovery has started sending notices to the developers behind Video Games Published by Adult Swim Their works will be removed from digital stores and deleted within the next 60 days.While the company has yet to confirm the fate of the nearly 20 Adult Swim games currently on Steam, the future of games like these Super gold coin team, wastedand Headlander Suddenly not so sure.
Adult Swim Games was founded in 2011. It is a video game publisher funded and operated by Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s established and long-running animated programming block.The network became popular in the early 2000s with late-night hit shows such as Venture Brothers, Water Teen Hungry Force, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and Harvey Birdman. Adult Swim Games went on to release some truly great games, including Double Fine’s Headlander, rain world, Kingsway, viking volga, and Combat Chef Brigade. In recent years, however, publishers have mostly gone dormant. its last published title used to be Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time 2020. according to a vice ReportAdult Swim Games Grants thunder’s dead— an indie zombie game similar to Pikmin — but was never released and left game development around 2019. Now, Adult Swim parent company WB Discovery is planning to pull the game due to “business changes,” according to three different developers.
News that WB plans to remove Adult Swim games coming March 5, tweet from developer Owen Deery.He explained that WB had contacted him and told him that it would be “retiring” his Adult Swim-published game small radio big tv Available on Steam and PS4. talking game developerDeery explained that the email was not a “discussion” but a “legal notice.”
“In terms of how it affected me: It was kind of depressing,” Deery said. “I’m very proud of this game, but I understand why they did it. Adult Swim games haven’t really taken off in years, and everyone I’ve worked with at the publisher has long since moved on elsewhere. When you use pure When it comes to digital products, nothing stays around for very long.”
game developer It also reported that it saw a copy of the email Deery received and shared the text:
Timetable: It is scheduled to be delisted within the next 60 days, during which time we will remove the game from Steam and PS4 platforms.
Support: Our customer service team will be notified of the retirement date and will provide a prepared response when contacted. […]Thank you for your contributions to our game library and for your understanding during this transition. If you have any questions, we are here to serve you.
Other popular games will also be removed soon
In the following days, two more developers publicly confirmed that their Adult Swim-published games would also be removed from digital stores after receiving similar emails.
Developer Michael Molinari shared on March 7 WB Discovery also contacted him and told him about his Adult Swim-published game, Sound source+will be removed from Steam “in the next 60 days.”
Molinari told Polygon WB refused to transfer ownership of the Steam version to him, even after he sent the company the information needed to let him control it Sound source+. Molinari told the outlet that Warner Bros. Discovery representatives said the decision to refuse to transfer ownership to the developer “steered from logistical and resource constraints” and “the limited capabilities of our team.” Polygon One developer told us that the current Adult Swim game team is a “skeleton team.”
Instead, Molinari will have to re-release the game to Steam, losing all wishlists and reviews in the process. He also said WB Discovery forced him to remove all mentions of Adult Swim from the game and its credits.
“I’m all for game protection, but it’s not the main thing,” Molinari added in a follow-up tweet.
At least one more game published by Adult Swim will be removed from Steam: fist punch. According to a March 6 Steam post A source from Matt Kain Lewandowski, one of the game’s developers, said the studio was notified by Warner Bros. Discovery Channel: fist punch “Will be retired and removed from Steam within the next 60 days.”
and Sound Master+, WB is reportedly refusing to use Valve’s easy-to-use process to transfer ownership of Steam games to developers.
“It’s very disappointing,” Lewandowski said. “I’m not entirely sure what would happen if the game was taken down, but the thought of a purchased game potentially being removed from the user library makes me sick. Our community and players have over 10 years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, Leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. may be lost. We have Kickstarter backers to provide funding fist punch (even some of the people who made cameos in the game) will eventually no longer be able to play it. “
Historically, delisted games could still be downloaded and replayed by those who owned them even after they were removed from digital stores, but that wasn’t always the case. my city WB Games and Adult Swim Games have been contacted about the situation.
Lewandowski told Polygon They continue to demand control fist punch on Steam, and make plans if you can’t get ownership of the original version.
“That is, if we don’t get the current version of fist punch Transfer it to us and then we might re-release it under our own account,” Lewandowski said. “We still own the game and the IP, so re-release is certainly possible. As someone who is passionate about preserving gaming history, I hate seeing any game get lost in corporate red tape. “
Andrew Morrish is another developer behind two Adult Swim games –Kingsway and Super puzzle platformer-Tell Polygon He expected WB Discovery to contact him “soon,” adding: “Things don’t look good.”
Not all Adult Swim games are owned by the publishers.Some, such as Rain World, Battle Kitchen Brigade, and vistrado A new publisher is found, or the developer takes back control of the game years after release.
However, according to SteamDB, there are There are currently 19 games on Steam Published by Adult Swim. It’s possible that within the next 60 days, some or all of these companies will be delisted by a greedy corporation that only cares about growth and shareholders at all costs –including deleting movies Before publishing and Shutting down beloved online companies like Rooster Teeth— to make the numbers go up and please some of the baddest and richest people around. While many of the removed games will return, there’s no guarantee that all will, and none will be the original version that people bought years ago. This is a terrible situation and yet another example of why large-scale corporate mergers should be stopped.
.