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.
Time, and time again, they prove how piracy is literally THE only option when it comes to preserving media.
Products no longer available to buy should fall into public domain.
WB are an absolute cancer. Suicide Squad fails spectacularly due to being a multiplayer live service game that nobody asked for, and their immediate response is to go all in on multiplayer live service games.
Because heaven forbid the executives could be fucking wrong.
... why? They're complete products that just sit there and make money for almost no effort
This practice feels like something that should be illegal. Effectively it is destroying art that hundreds or thousands of people worked hard to make, for the sake of fiddling the books of the owning company that commissioned it.
If you "write it off" to be worth zero, it should either become freely available abandonware, or can be claimed as the intellectual property of those that worked on it. Otherwise it is evident that there is some value to be had and therefore tax fraud to claim it has none.
I agree with you. If a company writes off something in order to make it with zero, then that thing should immediately fall into the public domain.
Finally someone is standing up to the woke mob. Thank you, WB conglomerate! You are the true underdog.
Luckily Steam will keep Duck Game in my library, but I dread the moment Valve leadership changes. Steam has existed for 20 years, and I naively hope I'll still be able to play my games in 40 years on my Steck Deck.
Why do they do this? It doesn't make sense. They don't have to pay to keep it listed.
If it's "failed" they can write off the investment as a loss. They get a tax break as a result. Capitalism rewards innovation (in tax avoidance), after all.
WHAT? THE FREE MARKET GIVES TAX BREAKS TO CORPOS WHEN THEY LOSE MONEY????? I DON'T KNOW WHAT I EXPECTED BUT I'M MAD
I read it was so they can fire the people whose job it was to pay the creators of the games.
Rights should go back to the devs from the publisher at that point, or full public domain if they don't want to distribute it either.
