Adult Swim Games is set to delist the many indie titles that it has published over the years, and it seems nobody's been more blindsided than the developers of those original games.
Earlier this week, Small Radios Big Televisions developer Owen Deery revealed that Adult Swim Games was "retiring" the title from digital stores. In the days since, the developers behind games like Fist Puncher and Soundodger+ have confirmed that they're also going to be affected by the decision, and it seems that every Adult Swim-published title is eventually going to be going away, too.
Adult Swim Games is, of course, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery, a corporate body which hasn't exactly been endearing itself to much of anyone in recent months, with unpopular moves like the full deletion of the completed film Coyote vs. Acme. On the games side, the company plans to invest more deeply in live service games after a disappointing launch for Suicide Squad - no, I don't know how that makes sense either - and it seems whatever cutbacks have been happening have effectively gutted the Adult Swim indie label.
"The email wasn't so much a discussion about retiring the game, it was a legal notice," Deery told Game Developer. "In terms of how it has affected me: it's kind of depressing, I'm very proud of the game, but I can see why they did it. Adult Swim Games hasn't really been a thing for many years now and everyone I worked with at the publisher has long since moved on to other places. When you're working with purely digital products nothing is going to stay around for very long."
Soundodger+ developer Michael Molinari noted on Twitter that the "games team is gone" at Adult Swim. "There's no one left to even collect a check." The galling part is that whoever is overseeing the shutdown of Adult Swim Games is unwilling to facilitate the transfer of these store listings back to the original developers.
"We've asked that Warner Bros. simply transfer the game to our Steam publisher account so that it can stay active," Fist Puncher co-developer Matt Kain Lewandowski said on the Steam forums, "but so far they have said no with the reason being that they made the universal decision not to transfer the games back to the original studios and do not have the resources to do so. No, the transfer process is not complicated. It likely takes about two minutes on their end."
Molinari got the same response, and apparently while the transfer process is trivial on Steam it's a lot more complicated on consoles. WB told Molinari that "they can't do it for consoles, and it would be unfair to do it for some, but not all." It's worth noting here that there are multiple games under the Adult Swim label, including Soundodger and Kingsway, that are exclusively available on PC.
Gosh I wish my small indie game would be covered by news outlets and big gaming accounts!*monkey's paw curls one finger* https://t.co/WRWb7BPyemMarch 8, 2024
Lewandowski fears that Fist Puncher "will presumably be removed" from the libraries of people who have already purchased it, but that's generally not how delistings work on Steam - and also not what Molinari expects to happen. I'd be shocked if these games were removed not just from purchase, but from people's libraries, though it does speak volumes that even the original devs aren't certain about what's happening.
Warner Bros is allowing these developers to republish their games, a stipulation that Deery has already taken advantage of to make Small Radios Big Televisions available for free. Yet that presents a big disadvantage for devs who want to continue making money from their games, since they'll have to start all over - "with zero reviews and zero wishlists," as Molinari has pointed out - amid the fickle whims of the Steam algorithm.
For now, you can head over to the Adult Swim page on Steam if you want to pick up any of the affected games. It seems that the devs involved will be getting one last royalty payment, though Deery at least would prefer you to just buy a soundtrack on a site where he gets "to keep most of that money."
"I feel this needs to be said somewhere," Lewandowski said in that Steam forum post, "but video games are art. Video games connect us. Video games are important. Video games are part of our cultural heritage and should be preserved." It's just a shame that so many games are trapped under corporate ownership that doesn't seem to care about them.
