Cartoon Community, a division of Warner Bros. Discovery, has quietly eliminated a half-dozen of its video games from sale on Steam and different digital platforms, together with Samurai Jack: Battle By way of Time, OK KO! Let’s Play Heroes, and Steven Universe: Unleash the Gentle.
The delistings, which as seen on SteamDB got here in a single batch earlier immediately, have been first seen by Wario64 on Bluesky:
Journey Time: Finn and Jake’s Epic Quest, and Journey Time: Magic Man’s Head Video games have additionally been eliminated. The video games have additionally reportedly been taken down from non-PC storefronts.
A purpose for the elimination wasn’t offered, however the retailer web page for every sport now carries the identical message, with solely the title modified: “Consideration gamers, OK Ok.O.! Let’s Play Heroes will now not be out there on the market after Dec twenty third, 2024. Thanks for enjoying, Cartoon Community Video games.”
The one exception is Samurai Jack: Battle By way of Time, which was printed by Grownup Swim Video games—however Grownup Swim is a division of Cartoon Community, so the separation appears fully a distinction with no distinction.
The takedowns come only a few months after Warner closed the Cartoon Community web site, shunting individuals to its Max web site as an alternative, and observe elimination of a bunch of Grownup Swim-published video games earlier this yr. One large distinction is that advance discover was offered in these circumstances, and the rights to not less than among the video games being faraway from sale have been as an alternative handed again to their homeowners after an outcry. On this spherical of removals, the notification that it was occurring appears to have been given because it occurred.
The video games being faraway from sale have been round for some time and do not have particularly massive participant bases, however we fairly preferred a few of them after they have been new: We mentioned OK Ok.O.! Let’s Play Heroes “seems like a cartoon and performs like an arcade traditional” again in 2017, and made an analogous declaration about Samurai Jack: Battle By way of Time in 2020, saying it “seems like a PS2 sport, in a great way.” No matter their deserves, although, seeing video games get disappeared for no discernible purpose is irksome as a matter of precept, notably when the corporate doing it’s a division of Warner, infamous in current instances for vaulting films Batgirl and Coyote vs Acme in favor of a tax writeoff.
I’ve reached out to Cartoon Community for data on the delistings and can replace if I obtain a reply.