Warner Bros. has been cancelling a number of its projects, including films like Batgirl and Coyote vs Acme. However, it seems the company is trying to erase more than just its movies, as a number of developers have spoken out.
Warner Bros. has begun the process of delisting games that were published under Adult Swim Games, which has a number of games on Steam and PlayStation. Two developers with games published by Adult Swim, have come forward to say that Warner Bros. has contacted them about removing their games.
Fire Face, the developer behind Small Radios Big Televisions, was informed that the game would be delisted in 60 days. Owen Deery, the sole developer and owner of Fire Face, has made the game free to download from his website, but each developer can decide whether to do the same.
Speaking to Games Developer, Deery called the decision “depressing”. He states that Warner Bros. blamed “internal business changes” for the decision without giving much explanation.
Another developer has also spoken out, claiming they received a very similar message from Warner Bros. Matt Kain Lewandowski, who is one half of the duo that created Fist Puncher, has said that Warner Bros. declined to transfer ownership of the Steam page to them in order to keep the game visible.
He said: “This is incredibly disappointing. It seems like more and more the video game industry is filled with people that don’t like and don’t care about video games. All that to say, buy physical games, make back-ups, help preserve our awesome industry and art form.”
So far these are the only two developers that have stepped forward, but we cannot discount the idea that this message was sent to other games under the Adult Swim label. Popular games like Robot Unicorn Attack, Frog Fractions 2, and Jazzpunk all come out with Adult Swim Games as publisher.
If that were the case, it seems like that would come out before restructuring, though it’s not like I’ve never seen companies waste money without noticing before