Warner Bros. Discovery Disappears Games People Already Purchased
from the poof-they're-gone dept
And here we go again. It’s time for another abject lesson in how you don’t actually own the things you’re “buying” in this here digital age. We’ve covered a ton of these stories at this point, obviously. But there are examples of people learning that they don’t actually own the thing they spent their money on… and then there are examples. This one is certainly one of the more egregious case studies in that respect.
Adult Swim Games is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery and has published a bunch of games that are available in several gaming marketplaces, such as on Steam and on console marketplaces. These games were created by a bunch of development studios, some of them small one-person shop indie outfits. Well, Warner Bros. Discovery has apparently decided to “retire” a bunch of those games. Importantly, this means that some specific versions of these games will be gone, even from those who already bought them. And, while the publishers in some cases will be allowed to re-publish the games themselves, it won’t be in a format that will transfer all of the data and achievements players have amassed, despite it being trivially easy for WBD to transfer those accounts if it wanted to.
In a comment on that Ars post, Matt Kain, developer of Adult Swim Games’ Fist Puncher, noted that they had received the same “retired” notice from WBD. “When we requested that Warner Bros simply transfer the game over to our studio’s Steam publisher account so that the game could stay active, they said no. The transfer process literally takes a minute to initiate (look up “Transferring Applications” in the Steamworks documentation), but their rep claimed they have simply made the universal decision not to transfer the games to the original creators,” Kain wrote.
Kain noted that his game’s players “have 10+ years of discussions, screenshots, gameplay footage, leaderboards, player progress, unlocked characters, Steam achievements, Steam cards, etc. which will all be lost.” In addition, Kickstarter backers of the game will lose access to a game in which they have a cameo, and his firm, Team2Bit, would likely face backlash if they re-released the game under their own account, forcing a second purchase from some customers.
WBD has also told developers that it has no plans of selling these titles in their original forms in the future, either. So, the company is going to disappear these titles but still retain control over them in their original form such that they can’t be released elsewhere or by the developers in their purchased-form. And all of the stuff that comes along with playing them for gamers is gone, too. Why?
Probably for tax write-off purposes.
Adult Swim Games has not published a game since 2020. Its parent company has said it was due for a “tough” quarter, and perhaps year, as its tentpole game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failed to find a sustaining audience. On a broader level, WBD has been conspicuously culling titles and removing access to its content, sometimes in pursuit of tax advantages. The firm has killed and hidden away films including Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, removed canceled shows and well-regarded animation and kids’ content, and, just this week, closed down gaming and anime studio Rooster Teeth.
And so legitimate buyers of this content who thought it meant they had some actual ownership of it, or investment into it for rewards in the case of crowd-sourced titles, are simply shit out of luck. And they don’t have to be. WBD could transfer these games to developer-owned publisher accounts. But for whatever the real reason is, and it’s most certainly not “logistical” reasons, WBD just won’t.
It’s probably past time at this point for there to be a digital consumer rights conversation about this new world we live in where our purchases live at the pleasure of the seller’s decision to let us keep them. Because the current reality is simply not sustainable.
Filed Under: adult swim, ownership, rental, retiring video games, video games
Companies: adult swim games, warner bros. discovery
Comments on “Warner Bros. Discovery Disappears Games People Already Purchased”
Maaaaaaaaaan
Fuck David Zazlav! Kills everything good he touches, first it was burning good shows and movies in favor of unscripted reality show garbage, now it’s video games in favor live service gatcha mobile garbage. Sucks for everyone involved in media that’s been swallowed up by this asshole.
Again if it wasn’t a sale, this isn’t piracy.
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Do you mean “if purchasing isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing”?
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Yeah, but you can understand why customers feel like Warner are a bunch of evil pirates, right? Coming out of nowhere to “take” what people thought was their “property”.
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More like “If it can’t be purchased, then it can’t be pirated”.
“Your Honor, they don’t sell the game at all, and they’ve stated they won’t ever sell it again, so how can obtaining the game from a friend be a lost sale?”.
Taxation
Obviously WBD and Zazlav are terrible and burning down a once respectable company. But the real tragedy is that US tax system pays companies to not make things. That’s really what needs fixed.
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If we had a functional government, this would be fixed.
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If we had a functional government, you wouldn’t be able to get tax breaks for removing already-produced things from the market and the people who purchased them.
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Um, yeah, didn’t I already say that? I think you’re agreeing with me. Unless you’re saying you are, which in this case I deeply apologize.
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If we had a functional government in the first place, this would have never gotten to the point where it needed fixing at all.
WSB plans to sell “bundles” which is where the phrasing “not selling in their original forms” was added.
Basically cancel games, re-sell them to existing owners in larger packs.
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Or rent it to the user for an indeterminate time.
Egcorn time
“It’s time for another [b]abject[b] lesson in how you don’t”
The correct form is “object” lesson. This situation may be an abject object lesson for those affected, but still, Tim!
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It makes perfectly good sense either way — and Tim’s version seems quite apposite* to the point he was making.
*) Yes, that is spelled correctly.
At this point, if you “buy” digital content like this, you kinda have it coming. Be a good citizen: pirate everything you can’t buy DRM-free.
This affects me personally
One of my friends in the Chiptune scene made Rain World and it was published by Adult Swim games. What good is a publisher if they’re going to renege on their publishing duties? You might as well go it alone from now on…
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Wait Wait, they’re delisting Rain World?!?!
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Okay, it looks like that they are no longer published by Adult Swim, my friend dodged a bullet there.
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i had no idea Rain World was published by Adult Swim.
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I was working on outdated information…they are no longer published by Adult Swim so this doesn’t affect them. Sorry to make you worried!
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You just spread dis-information! Typical prog-tard.
Yo Ho Ho and a NAS full of things that I paid for, that cannot be stolen from me, because some twunt made a shitty decision.
Good Luck media companies. You are literally your own worst enemies.
Wishful thinking...
Only way I can see to reverse this is if Microsoft, Sony and/or Valve get involved. There’s probably too much money on the table from other WB games to make any credible threats though.
Copyright infringers, as always, are unaffected
Well that’s one way for them to add themselves to the list of ‘publishers never to buy from, because you aren’t actually buying squat’ list.
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Another few more years of this horse shit and I’ll never buy another piece of media, period.
Currently, if I find value, I’ll buy it. Someone worked on it and should get paid for that….How-fucking-ever.
They push more people to piracy and those that already pirate and less and less willing to pay for good things, that we actually use, because some shitclown like this will decide there is more money to be made harming consumers.
They’ll pull my seedbox out of my cold, dead hands and no one to blame but themselves. Arrrrgggg
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Oh. I’ll still buy media. I’ll just buy it in the form I always have: old-school, outdated, and physical. How do you feel about the ‘next big thing’ now guys? Maybe you should have been hold-outs like me.
This started going wrong when companies started licensing software instead of selling it. The shrink wrap license allowed the company more control of what the customer could do than a first sale under copyright law.
That was the norm when I started a software company in the 1980s. You got a license to use the software but you didn’t purchase the software. My first product was sold (i.e. copyright first sale). My subsequent products were distributed by larger companies and were licensed.
I believe this idea came from IBM in the 1960s. Over time this was extended from software to other things. And for both good and bad.
For good you have the GPL which is a license, it isn’t a transfer of ownership.
The bad is companies pulling “purchased” items back due to a change at the company.
Can someone explain to me, like I’m 5, how it is the government is giving cash to those who have the exclusive rights (for an allegedly limited time) to take that content off the market & locking it away?
Other than a pinky promise, how do we know they won’t make use of the content again?
How do we leave the rights to the IP in their hands when they have taken the cash option to lock it up?
I mean we’re used to getting the really shitty end of the stick in this bargain, but we are paying them for it & allowing them to maintain control over it despite being paid off. What benefit does the public get from this, other than more content being vanished to improve a stock price & making the products worse??
Not allowed in Europe & UK
Over here in the socialist UK we have the Unfair Contract Terms Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_Contract_Terms_Act_1977
This blocks any contract term which would let one party to a contract unilaterally decide not to bother. So AFAICT companies here just can’t do this. The EU has similar rules.
Timothy, you misspelled the word ‘especially’.
WB’s recent business model seems to be “tell people not to buy our products”. Bold, but I’m not sure there’s profit…
Wake up! Stupid!
TLDR: Ultimately, you are buying a license. To use your purchased license as long as said licence is in action. Game, movie,
Song, app, codec, …………….! Make a frigging backup!!!!!!!
When will people learn to read the ToC on their spending!!!
For those on steam and practicing proper cybersecurity with backups, the games will work. With or without support. If you downloaded it it will work. (Excluding cloud gaming).
Backups work on BSD, MacOS, and Linux as well
For those on Xbox, you can clone your drive m, which you should be doing anyway.
If your one ScrewU CensorStation good luck.
General security and recovery practices would eliminate most of the issue.
I’m still playing a JRPG FFT that was pulled 6 years ago, a windows app on my Mac. 3 Macs later.
A bit of Bing or, yuck, google searching and you have all the answers you need to run ‘dead’ software.