Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim unclear.
The media conglomerate’s planned removal of those games echoes cuts from its film and television business; Warner Bros. Discovery infamously scrapped plans to release nearly complete movies Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, and removed multiple series from its streaming services. If Warner Bros. does go through with plans to delist Adult Swim’s games from Steam and digital console stores, 18 or more games could be affected.
News of the Warner Bros. plan to potentially pull Adult Swim’s games from Steam and the PlayStation Store was first reported by developer Owen Reedy, who released puzzle-adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions through the label in 2016. Reedy said on X Tuesday the game was being “retired” by Adult Swim Games’ owner. He responded to the company’s decision by making the Windows PC version of Small Radios Big Televisions available to download for free from his studio’s website.
I’ve never encountered a better argument for piracy and drm-free content than abandonware
There should be a law in the United States - if you stop selling it, 1 year later you lose your copyright and it becomes public domain.
If you can remove content from the marketplace for a tax write off, the removed content should become public property.
That actually makes a ton of sense. We fucking paid for it after all.
https://mander.xyz/post/5948544
Yeah. I’ve heard multiple times how entire careers are made supporting abandonware. The US military I believe pays microsoft millions a year to add security updates to their own version of Windows XP so old software can keep working.