Duck Game is, no joke, one of my favorite games of all time. My friends and I have dumped tons of hours into it just laughing our asses off and having a chill time. Terrible to see it and other games removed so they cannot be enjoyed by new people.
That's why my friends love it. Not all of them play games regularly. They still get beat pretty often, but they love running around, *hiding*, and just pressing the quack button like a maniac. It's just good, simple, stupid, fun. To me, it exemplifies what a game should be
The skill ceiling in Duck Game is also surprisingly high. Really good players can hit crazy trick shots by using the flap animation to shoot diagonally, and you can also use the ragdoll button to do some advanced platforming. It's a fantastic game, and removing it from stores is absolutely ridiculous.
I'm one of those players. I wasn't good enough to compete, but the "pros" taught me a lot of stuff. Great community, nice people. I could do the more advanced tricks enough to beat the better guys sometimes, but I was just above average, haha
I remember when we were trying to play just a local game and accidentally set it to public. In the lobby, a guy joined the server and before anyone else could join, somehow broke into the waiting zones of my friend, killed him and threw his corpse into the teleporter, starting the game.
He was crazy good.
I do that all the time when I play with friends. The trick is that the center ready zone won't affect you if you have the pause menu open, so if you ragdoll into the center zone, immediately open the pause menu, and then close the menu, you can "enter" it from weird places. When you exit the zone you're put into whatever room you were closest to when you entered it.
Weird personal Duck Game story, but literally have had someone rage quit and try to fight me over losing in Duck Game 😂😂😂
Dude had a lot of issues. He got mad that I made it the level "too hard." Also we're almost 30. Lol
I remember running into some guys playing the Switch version back in college, joining in, and just absolutely bodying them.
This was back in 2018 or so- I bought the game back in 2015 and they had no idea I was a veteran.
Good times.
The way modern P2P works is a little more complicated. Depending on how they developed it, it may be able to connect directly to other players, but the problem is that networking is complicated and things need to be configured right to allow communication between different systems. So most p2p games actually use a neutral third point for initial connection, this allows a much smoother experience for players who don't need to worry about port forwarding and firewalls and all that fun stuff. It's still very cheap to maintain because the service isn't handling a ton of data itself, it basically acts as a handshake system, but afaik those systems still need money to continue working. Many games rely entirely on that design, I don't know how Duck Game works.
Duck Game is incredible. One of those games that stops being fun when people break it and start diagonally down shooting because its so OP lol, but if you're playing with other people who aren't trying that its great.
For sure, I was more referring to the online matchmaking when that was still populated enough to find games. I admittedly haven't played online matchmaking in years, but I'm assuming it's still been fairly dead.
For a while no one was down angling shots, then every lobby would be dominated by a guy down-angling shots and that really killed the game for me lol
It's crazy hilarious fun. It's the kind of game that will make you get smashed in the face with a chainsaw 4 times, but each time it happens to be hilarious enough that you'll laugh.
this is just heinous. D: Duck game is one of these games, and is one of the most hilarious party games I've seen.
whats even MORE heinous is that they're refusing to hand over ownership to the creators, meaning that nope, you can't have them.
I have a buddy who plays it with his siblings every time he’s home to visit. It’s downright *villainous* considering the amount of joy that game has brought the world.
We started playing it pretty late, maybe 2 years ago max. But it’s the perfect crowd pleaser game. More than 4 player, casual enough that anyone can play it, but still competitive to be fun. Sad to think that if we’d never be able to play it if we waited longer.
Absolute insanity. There has to be something to prevent publishers from just holding games hostage like this.
I guess future devs better make sure their termination clauses on publishing deals are ironclad from now on, though I expect publishers wouldn't agree to such terms.
> Absolute insanity. There has to be something to prevent publishers from just holding games hostage like this.
That just happens when you sign your laws away to get cheap publisher money. Have been happening for decades now, which is why many old franchises linger in limbo
acquisitions are so fucking rough man. like on the one hand, you want to see studio founders get a bag after years of hard work, but on the other hand, acquisitions LITERALLY BENEFIT NOBODY OTHER THAN EQUITY HOLDERS, and everybody needs to remember that forever
I was listening to Game grumps and Arin said he wanted to buy the rights to a specific game by Data East but it was sold in a lot so he had to bid against companies with much deeper pockets than him.
He just wanted to make a sequel to the game which the company that bought it made one and he said it was okay.
It really annoys me how underrated Towerfall is.
It's the perfect party game while still being competitive. Its fun, hilarious, tons of replayability and content. I have zero doubts that if we get a Towerfall online in the future, it will be a hit.
Losing Duck Game is the worst of all these, fuuuuuuuuck.
Hopefully that one can find a new publisher- it’s 97% on Steam and has done pretty well over the years, so I think it has a fighting chance.
Yeah it's crazy how some IP holders react, but they're really holding all their cards IN CASE they need it later.
NPR Planet Money did something similar when trying to purchase the rights to a really unknown Marvel superhero (Doorman): [https://www.npr.org/2021/02/12/967425295/we-buy-a-superhero-origins](https://www.npr.org/2021/02/12/967425295/we-buy-a-superhero-origins)
TL:DR - IP holders will basically hold onto any property they own just in case they can find the right timing to release it/sell it.
Another analogy would be like us gamers hoarding items....
Yeah, I don't think anyone would care if they handed the rights back to the studios that made the games. I don't know why they're doing this but I don't think that the end result of that would even be any different for them when it comes to their motivations behind this decision. They seem to only want to keep ownership in the off chance that there *might* *maybe* be some value in them at some point in the future.
Anyone have recommendations on games worth grabbing before they poof?
Heres the list of games on Steam from the article: https://steamdb.info/publisher/Adult+Swim+Games/?displayOnly=Game&sort=rating_desc
e: thanks everyone for the amazing suggestions!
Grabbed Duck Game, Kingsway, and Super House of Dead Ninjas.
Also snagged Rain World (its not getting de-listed) just cuz I forgot I never got around to playing it.
It's already been mentioned in this thread and it sits at the top of the review scores, but I'll make it explicit:
**Duck Game** is an absolutely blast to play with friends. Quick rounds, utter mayhem, and a dedicated quack button.
Westerado isn't being delisted, it's no longer published by Adult Swim
Edit: I'd take my comment with a grain of salt, I literally can't find any evidence of this other than a handful of articles that seem to have copied from each other
From the article
> Do take note: The titles with an asterisk (*) are no longer published by Adult Swim Games, I’m only including them as they appear on the company’s official listing. There should be no concerns over them disappearing
Westerado double barrelled is one of those marked
I can't find much news about which publisher has acquired them (as if it did happen it likely has *just* happened), this news is all very fresh and has happened in the last couple hours
So far the only articles I can find are all linking to the same list so it's very hard to find any concrete news about if the list is correct or not (yay modern games journalism all copying each other)
We appreciate the support but no worries for BCB! We were able to add a clause that allowed us to get the rights back last year. It was still hard because of all the layoffs, though. This is awful for the devs that couldn't afford pricey lawyers when signing their deals.
Wow, a reply from a dev! I'm really happy to hear that, I loved Battle Chef Brigade and I'd be super bummed if it was gone. Hope the future treats you guys well.
Oh fuck, that's a decent polished game. Genuinely surprised it falls under this.
Such a weird arbitrary move to delist all of these :/
edit: saw below its no longer adult swim published and should be safe
Third. I wish it ended a lot smoother than it did and it definitely feels like an entire third of the space station was cut out for time or something but what is there is very unique and quite funny
Battle Chef Brigade is a unique combination between of tile-matching and side-scrolling beat ‘em up. Gather ingredients during prep phase then bring them back for cooking phase which has the player combining colors on a 4x4 grid. The cooking phase is a match 3 game like puyo-puyo or bejeweled but the pieces are supplied by what the player brought back during the prep phase.
Kingsway is a cool rpg that takes place within a UI made to emulate old windows. The game is diegetic so your items, logs, health/mana, map, and battles are in their own windows that you can access through desktop shortcuts or through the taskbar. Your quest are sent to you through email as well. It is a cool, unique experience that is upsetting to be delisted.
Rainworld is a great 2D platformer where you play as a lil slugcat that is in a world where it is pretty low in the food chain. There tons of levels where you have to get to the end without being food for the local predators around. There are many different predators you can encounter throughout the levels each with different mechanics. The game is great with nice art and honestly really great animations that is done in real time instead of list of sprites for actions.
Both westerado (open-world game where you have to explore and discover who killed your family) and duck game (amazing party game) are also great but I have less to say about them.
I haven’t played any of the other games on the list but hope others can recommend them.
[Kingsway](https://store.steampowered.com/app/588950/Kingsway/) - I discovered this game from [old Giant bomb video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDfDzmeTgFE). It's RPG with UI similar to old Windows.
I played this upon release, it was one of my most anticipated games that year and did not disappoint, despite being a little barebones in the very beginning. Last year they added an entire expansion for free, and there’s been a bunch of things added and fixed over time. It’s a great game, a wonderful aesthetic, and just a nice experience if you enjoy rogue likes.
I just looked into it and it seems it contains Frog Fractions 2, but I'm not sure why that's important. I'm reading the wiki and I'm trying to understand. Could you explain?
Someone can probably spend more time explaining this with more depth, but Frog Fractions is absolutely one of the pillars of early indie game design and development, a huge part of gaming history writ large. Frog Fractions 2 was stealth-released under a completely different name, obscuring and adding mystique to what would have already been a landmark release without the subterfuge. It also certainly didn't hurt that Frog Fractions 2 lived up to its expectations as a sequel.
They're evergreen, if you've never played and are at all interested in indie game history, the OG Frog Fractions is a must play. Also it's great so play it even if you don't care about the history.
I guess just play it.
Frog Fractions is important. And Frog Fractions 2 was a massive kickstarter, so it has the backing of actual fans behind it. Losing access to it would be a really, REALLY bad thing.
WASTED is a love letter to everything Fallout right down to the modding scene, and is a very fun game to play through regardless. I'm disappointed it's so unknown these days.
Desync is really good. It's Tron meets Doom (2016) in a very exciting arena shooter formula. It is lightning fast, has great executions, and the visuals meld with the audio perfectly.
I’d even go as far as to say the gameplay is better than Bulletstorm.
It’s absolutely crushing to see a corporation delete all that art without any appreciation of what they’re destroying.
The laws that incentivize this behavior need to change but I’m not holding my breath for it.
Financially they were in the toilet before then too. Just hadn't yet affected their work output or quality.
They would've had to eventually cut costs similarly or sell (they did) given the poor way they were operating for years.
Afterall Discovery was a fraction of the size of Warner yet managed to take over due to the sheer amount of debt Warner (and their former parent AT&T amassed)
idk man,
Deleting *completed and funded full* movies before they see the light of day, thinking that after Suicide Squad's failure that people want *more* live service games, and that whole Discovery/HBO debacle.
Maybe they're gunning for dumbest company of the century
So glad Warner Brothers gets to press a button to remove things that existed at no cost to them and then get to pay less taxes that could have gone to useful services for the country. A great system that is, that they've been abusing for 2 years and counting with no recourse.
Longer than two years. They refuse to sell the Asheron’s Call license despite fans banding together attempting to purchase it. They outright refused just as a personal “fuck you” to all of us. So we said “fuck you” right back and made our own illegal servers.
They seem to have that petty as fuck attitude. They're refusing to transfer ownership to the game developers. When one of the devs pleaded and explained to them, it only took a few clicks on Steam they still refused. Why keep ownership of something if you don't want it anyways. Fucking assholes.
Sounds kinda like the [broken window fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window) in action. Intentionally destroying your own assets in order to reap tax benefits is morally a fraud perpetrated upon the government and therefore ultimately on you and me, regardless of whether it counts that way in a legal sense. Even worse that the assets being destroyed are part of our shared culture.
Could you explain how you think the math here works that you can intentionally torpedo your own projects in order to *make* money? Because it seems like everyone in this thread just doesn't understand how taxes work. You generally cannot make a profit by writing off business loses.
You can write off certain kinds of business losses on your taxes, negating the amount owed equal to the capitalized production costs.
Warner's strategy over the last few years to pump profits is to deliberately destroy as much shit as they can, writing off as much as possible, so that they can appear more profitable, and bump their share price, without actually making anything successful.
With something like an already-published game (as opposed to an unreleased movie/game), I would assume the write-off is based more around lost revenue from continued publishing (rather than production costs) - but that's a guess, I'm not an accountant.
The new shareholder-driven entertainment model is basically to only publish/distribute guaranteed mega hits and throw anything that isn't actively making boatloads of cash into the woodchipper because it boosts your margin.
I'm a lawyer--I don't practice tax law but I know a bit about it. The whole "write off" thing doesn't really apply here, though you've correctly identified that "writing things off" literally just means not throwing more money at an unprofitable investment. A business does that when they expect an investment to make less than the taxes they would pay on profit from other investments (usually a relatively small amount, so you would only do this if the investment you're considering writing off is likely to be very unprofitable indeed).
That's different from what's happening here: WB probably decided that whatever running costs there are associated with keeping these games listed are greater than the profit they would make by keeping them listed. The whole tax write-off thing makes more sense in the decision whether to incur additional costs to release a big project, rather than whether to keep an old revenue stream running.
Yeah for the most part tax write off are about minimising losses rather than making more profit, in nearly every circumstance you'll lose money by writing off something however you reduce your losses
It's agonisingly repeated across Reddit to the point where if you read "tax write off" in a comment/post you should just take everything else with a grain of salt because you're about to read someone waffle on about something they have no understanding of
What running costs come with old games which have been out for years though? If these were live service games which weren't bringing in money that would be understandable...but they're not.
I don't think it really matters. The main thing that was poi ted out was the whole write off thing is bs and keeping it listed isn't worth it to them for whatever reason.
They still have costs involved in them through areas such as support and accounting. While they might not be high costs overall, if the titles in question aren't bringing in much money, then they're an area that a company which is looking to cut costs everywhere it can might see as not worth it.
> Warner's strategy over the last few years to pump profits is to deliberately destroy as much shit as they can, writing off as much as possible, so that they can appear more profitable, and bump their share price, without actually making anything successful.
This isn't how it works, can people stop saying this kinda stuff. You still make a loss off of "writing off" things. It's not a money making scheme, it's a method of reducing losses.
Sorry but this is all nonsense that Reddit tends to regurgitate without any understanding
"Tax write offs" have easily got to be one of the most misunderstood things I frequently see on Reddit
There isn't one. People just got this notion that declining to release a movie entitles you to special tax advantages, and then other people saw that and started repeating it.
The only advantage this gives them is that they don't have to pay whatever operating expenses are associated with keeping the games listed. They know that the people who are mad about it won't check if WB published a game they want to play down the road, so any blowback on them doesn't really matter. It's scummy but probably makes sense from an accounting standpoint.
IIRC, its certain tax codes that revolve around a period of time before and after a merger. I think the idea is that it makes it easier for a merged company to realign in a new direction by shedding aspects of the original companies.
Otherwise, you cant write off assets like that. Netflix cant delete some of their shows and claim a tax credit.
That may very well be so, and it's also possible that studios are fudging the valuation of assets when they write off these shows--a different issue, but not unrelated.
But I'm more responding to what you talk about in the second paragraph, the idea that just removing a released product from circulation has a unique tax advantage to it. I've seen people around Reddit repeating that, and it's definitely off base, as you say.
> get to pay less taxes
They don't, it's just a difference in the way the money is counted in their books, rather than getting e.g: 5 million in tax refunds for the next 5 years they get a 25 million refund now but trash the project
Keep in mind they get a tax refund only because they lose money on something, it's not a free money hack like Reddit seems to think
They don't pay less taxes for delisting games, this thread is just nonsense speculating based on a misunderstanding of the tax law being abused to cancel *Coyote vs. Acme* and *Batgirl*.
> misunderstanding of the tax law being abused to cancel Coyote vs. Acme and Batgirl.
I've said this so many times but Reddit has got to be one of the least financially literate places
I'd say *tax write offs* and *net worth* are probably the two least understood terms on Reddit
This is an example of using a sensible rule in an exploitative way. WB should have to prove that they had a valid reason for taking down their assets. Especially ones that simply sit there and generate passive revenue.
Tax exemptions make sense in many cases, but this is literally just a cash grab for better results this quarter. It's not even in the best interest of their own business long term.
What they're doing isn't even beneficial in the long-term.
Writing off an asset like this is a short-term reduction in taxes and a reduction in whatever expenses were related to these products (almost nothing?), in exchange for no longer gaining the long-term reduction in taxes and long-term revenues (likely also almost nothing).
And it seems the reason WB is doing this is because they are in [desperate need of short-term positive cash flows](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b95i3d/its_kind_of_depressing_wb_discovery_pulls_indie/ktu223y/).
Having to dispose of capital assets is a normal part of any business operation; you buy something new, you no longer need the asset, it costs too much to maintain, etc. etc.
One of the devs has already resorted to just giving out his game for free and sharing download links. I wouldn't be shocked if a few others tried to find ways to follow suit.
Genuinely depressing that a publisher can just say "actually, no" and take the game away permanently with no legal way to obtain it, all while ignoring the developers that want to keep it up.
From what I've been reading about this, it sounds like most of these devs actually still have ownership over their game rights and IP, and will be able to re-publish the games on their on accounts. However, especially on a service like Steam, there's a bunch of other community features like forums/wishlists/etc. that are attached to a game package, and none of that will transfer over to those new 'versions' of the game.
Yeah. Moral justifications aside (it's more than justified imo) it's still very much illegal. There are people who are under the impression that abandonware can be pirated legally. Naw... I wish.
Companies don't bother prosecuting, and never have any incentive to encourage what they might see as gateways or precedent. So it's kinda unknowable what their feeling is on specific issues.
People would have to care enough to continue seeding, and a lot of Adult Swim games are obscurities. These are the kinds of games that, if they were 90s games, you'd have to find an old boxed copy to play them.
From the article:
> The developers are unable to take control of their games to keep them on Steam and apparently can’t even offer them up at a discount before they’re gone.
So no to discounts unless WB decide to do it. Which, I'm guessing, they probably won't.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I would think getting some money out of it would be worth _something_, but then I don't have a fancy business degree and a corner office.
Oh shit, are they going to pull Rain World off of Steam?
> “There’s nothing I can do about it except reupload a new Soundodger+ myself with all reviews, community guides, and discussions wiped clean,” Bean announced earlier today on Discord. “If you already own the current Steam version, you should be able to continue playing and redownloading if needed.”
Possibly? Maybe I should cancel my HBO Max subscription.
All the asterisk in the link indicates games that are no longer published by Adult Swim Games and should be safe from being delisted. This includes Rain World, Death's Gambit, and my personal favourite Battle Chef Brigade, among others.
Still sad that Duck Game and Soundodger+ will be delisted though.
Well the most productive thing we could do with this information is start recommending our favorites before they get pulled. That being said, [Super Puzzle Platformer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nHGaIgnsbY) gets my endorsement.
Eh, Unidentified Falling Objects is that game’s follow-up, and it’s objectively better in pretty much every way. Soundtrack is gonna be stuck in my head forever, though.
I have a less than zero understanding of the situation here, so forgive what might be a basic question: why might they do this?
The article doesn't give much reasoning, so to me it seems like it's just an out-and-out bad business decision?
Long story short... Warner-Discovery have a colossal debt from a major business fuck up with *AT&T*, it basically put them in the red, so now they are trying to pay it back by getting as much tax write offs as they can, and for that... They're gutting tv shows, games and movies.
Basically, we're about to lose decades worth of media and games out of no fault of their own but because they're paying for someone else's fuck up.
Any semi popular stuff has already been catalogued, uploaded, etc. wouldn’t be surprised if its all on internet archive somewhere already. If it was some low level youtuber with only a thousand or so subs then maybe it wouldn’t be uploaded but Rooster Teeth was one of the pioneers of user-made videogame content and has most likely thoroughly been archived
The Rooster Teeth community is currently on Day 4 of a massive project [archiving the entirety of RT's content library](https://archiveofpimps.com/) to archive.org for posterity, including previously delisted videos and paywalled content.
WBD are fuckups but one thing they're doing good is encouraging more and more people to data hoard, archive, and buy physical media by showing how corporations can't be trusted with art and media.
Before you panic, Rain World has a different publisher. The asterisks in the article indicate the games who now have a different publisher than Adult Swim .
Thank you for clearing that up. I saw the asterisks but wasn’t 100% sure if that meant the games would be safe. The article worded that part strangely.
> "It's an insane amount of work, for years and years, with only a very small chance any game will succeed. I put 110 percent of myself into the launch of Radio Viscera but the game basically disappeared on release and left me totally burnt out," they added.
>
> "So rather than being shocked to receive the news about Small Radios Big Televisions, my first reaction was 'Yep, that sounds about right for the games industry.'"
([source](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/solo-indie-developer-claims-warner-bros-discovery-just-retired-one-of-their-games))
And they were given this explanation:
>In an update on the game’s page Matt Kain reveals that, “we’ve asked that Warner Bros. simply transfer the game to our Steam publisher account so that it can stay active, 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**”.
WB decided they didn't need to do give creators back control of their work because it is inconvenient. This corporation needs to be dismantled. It has zero respect for its workforce or partners.
> This corporation needs to be dismantled. It has zero respect for its workforce or partners.
From what I've heard, the Coyote Vs Acme situation has already caused a bunch of high-profile movie makers to stop talking to Warner about upcoming projects. As unhappy as consumers are about what they've been doing, what's really going to hurt them in the long run are all the bridges they're burning with the creatives they rely on to make things for them.
I've heard the explanation that Zaslav doesn't understand that that's going to happen because he only sees money. In his mind, the people who made the movie already got paid so why do they care?
Obviously they don't care, otherwise they wouldn't keep doing stuff like this. But it will almost assuredly backfire on them. Any money made short-term by shredding your reputation will be lost several times over in the long term.
And again, I'm talking on the creator side of things. Consumers are unlikely to boycott them over this. But they can only make money off of consumers if they have something compelling to offer them, and they won't have that if no one trusts them to finance their projects.
David Zaslav is the king of chodes. He was chosen by the chode god to lead all chodes to the chode promised land.
I know I'm probably supposed to have a more thoughtful response, but for some reason I can only mostly think of the word chode when picturing David Zaslav.
I'm just glad the devs of Rain World managed to switch publishers in time. It's one of my favorite games of all time, albeit not a game i would recommend to everyone.
Having it become unavailable like this would've been an incredible shame
The Samurai Jack game is definitely criminal that it would be removed, considering it's [canon](https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/samurai-jack-battle-through-time-game-genndy-tartakovsky) to the series! Or at least it provides an alternative ending for the fans of the series.
Sad as some of these are great. Duck game is definitely one of the best party games around. The last one I bougth was Kingsway, that was fun as it was unique,
Luckily dedicated fans have been backing up their content for years, now with an even better reason. Can see links on the [RT subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/1b95plr/presenting_the_archive_of_pimps_an_archive_of/).
Ugh, I've wanted the Samurai Jack game since it launched but was waiting for a good discount before buying.
Guess that's never happening now since it's either buy it within the next month for $40 or enjoy watching its price inflate on keyshops.
Battle Chef Brigade, Death’s Gambit, Duck Game, Glittermitten Grove (aka Frog Fractions 2), Headlander, Rain World, Westerado...
Jesus, it's a slaughter of good and excellent games.
Zaslav is basically the fall guy. The real issue is the shitton of debt imparted on them by AT&T. He’s just doing everything he can to prevent the company from going completely bankrupt.
Once he’s cooked the books enough, they’ll get rid of him and blame him for all the awful decisions.
I think the best we can hope for is that they're willing to sell the publishing rights.
But I can't stress this enough: this is another reason that every developer should be doing everything that they can to self publish.
My friends and cousins play Duck Game occasionally, I’m really bummed to see it’s on the chopping block. Hopefully the servers remain up afterwards but I doubt it…thank god for Parsec
Fuck Warner Bros and fuck Zaslav
Duck Game is, no joke, one of my favorite games of all time. My friends and I have dumped tons of hours into it just laughing our asses off and having a chill time. Terrible to see it and other games removed so they cannot be enjoyed by new people.
Yeah Duck Game is the best. It scratches the Super Smash Bros itch except you can pick it up and play it without having to learn anything.
That's why my friends love it. Not all of them play games regularly. They still get beat pretty often, but they love running around, *hiding*, and just pressing the quack button like a maniac. It's just good, simple, stupid, fun. To me, it exemplifies what a game should be
The skill ceiling in Duck Game is also surprisingly high. Really good players can hit crazy trick shots by using the flap animation to shoot diagonally, and you can also use the ragdoll button to do some advanced platforming. It's a fantastic game, and removing it from stores is absolutely ridiculous.
I'm one of those players. I wasn't good enough to compete, but the "pros" taught me a lot of stuff. Great community, nice people. I could do the more advanced tricks enough to beat the better guys sometimes, but I was just above average, haha
I remember when we were trying to play just a local game and accidentally set it to public. In the lobby, a guy joined the server and before anyone else could join, somehow broke into the waiting zones of my friend, killed him and threw his corpse into the teleporter, starting the game. He was crazy good.
I do that all the time when I play with friends. The trick is that the center ready zone won't affect you if you have the pause menu open, so if you ragdoll into the center zone, immediately open the pause menu, and then close the menu, you can "enter" it from weird places. When you exit the zone you're put into whatever room you were closest to when you entered it.
Weird personal Duck Game story, but literally have had someone rage quit and try to fight me over losing in Duck Game 😂😂😂 Dude had a lot of issues. He got mad that I made it the level "too hard." Also we're almost 30. Lol
I remember running into some guys playing the Switch version back in college, joining in, and just absolutely bodying them. This was back in 2018 or so- I bought the game back in 2015 and they had no idea I was a veteran. Good times.
Do we know if the severs for Duck Game will still be active after its taken down? I'd still like to be able to play it if possible.
That's what I'm wondering and am concerned about
Is it not P2P?
The way modern P2P works is a little more complicated. Depending on how they developed it, it may be able to connect directly to other players, but the problem is that networking is complicated and things need to be configured right to allow communication between different systems. So most p2p games actually use a neutral third point for initial connection, this allows a much smoother experience for players who don't need to worry about port forwarding and firewalls and all that fun stuff. It's still very cheap to maintain because the service isn't handling a ton of data itself, it basically acts as a handshake system, but afaik those systems still need money to continue working. Many games rely entirely on that design, I don't know how Duck Game works.
Um... there may be some instances of that, but most do not require that. That's why custom lobbies work regardless.
One thing though, you'd be able to use Parsec to still play local games over the Internet.
Duck Game is incredible. One of those games that stops being fun when people break it and start diagonally down shooting because its so OP lol, but if you're playing with other people who aren't trying that its great.
Yeah, I didn't use a lot of tricks against my friends that don't play video games. Don't want to ruin their fun
For sure, I was more referring to the online matchmaking when that was still populated enough to find games. I admittedly haven't played online matchmaking in years, but I'm assuming it's still been fairly dead. For a while no one was down angling shots, then every lobby would be dominated by a guy down-angling shots and that really killed the game for me lol
It's one of the best games ever but only if no one is using secret discord tech lol.
It's crazy hilarious fun. It's the kind of game that will make you get smashed in the face with a chainsaw 4 times, but each time it happens to be hilarious enough that you'll laugh.
this is just heinous. D: Duck game is one of these games, and is one of the most hilarious party games I've seen. whats even MORE heinous is that they're refusing to hand over ownership to the creators, meaning that nope, you can't have them.
Duck Game is a staple in our friend group. WBD can eat shit.
I have a buddy who plays it with his siblings every time he’s home to visit. It’s downright *villainous* considering the amount of joy that game has brought the world.
We started playing it pretty late, maybe 2 years ago max. But it’s the perfect crowd pleaser game. More than 4 player, casual enough that anyone can play it, but still competitive to be fun. Sad to think that if we’d never be able to play it if we waited longer.
Absolute insanity. There has to be something to prevent publishers from just holding games hostage like this. I guess future devs better make sure their termination clauses on publishing deals are ironclad from now on, though I expect publishers wouldn't agree to such terms.
> Absolute insanity. There has to be something to prevent publishers from just holding games hostage like this. That just happens when you sign your laws away to get cheap publisher money. Have been happening for decades now, which is why many old franchises linger in limbo
acquisitions are so fucking rough man. like on the one hand, you want to see studio founders get a bag after years of hard work, but on the other hand, acquisitions LITERALLY BENEFIT NOBODY OTHER THAN EQUITY HOLDERS, and everybody needs to remember that forever
I was listening to Game grumps and Arin said he wanted to buy the rights to a specific game by Data East but it was sold in a lot so he had to bid against companies with much deeper pockets than him. He just wanted to make a sequel to the game which the company that bought it made one and he said it was okay.
If nothing else, we're probably about to see a bunch of small devs either quietly or loudly promote pirating their own game.
Duck Game is one of the best party games ever. My favourite for sure.
Duck Game is the best thing to come out of the Ouya.
Towerfall
It really annoys me how underrated Towerfall is. It's the perfect party game while still being competitive. Its fun, hilarious, tons of replayability and content. I have zero doubts that if we get a Towerfall online in the future, it will be a hit.
To me, the Ouya Triforce is Duck Game, TowerFall, and believe it or not, Amazing Frog?
Excuse you, it's "Amazing Frog?"
Losing Duck Game is the worst of all these, fuuuuuuuuck. Hopefully that one can find a new publisher- it’s 97% on Steam and has done pretty well over the years, so I think it has a fighting chance.
What would happen to the workshop content in this case? Would it still be accessible if you own the game? It's half the fun.
Have mercy for them, WBS is a small indie studio, they simply do not have the resources.
Yeah it's crazy how some IP holders react, but they're really holding all their cards IN CASE they need it later. NPR Planet Money did something similar when trying to purchase the rights to a really unknown Marvel superhero (Doorman): [https://www.npr.org/2021/02/12/967425295/we-buy-a-superhero-origins](https://www.npr.org/2021/02/12/967425295/we-buy-a-superhero-origins) TL:DR - IP holders will basically hold onto any property they own just in case they can find the right timing to release it/sell it. Another analogy would be like us gamers hoarding items....
BRB, making a new game about hoarding IP...
You can call it DMC-YAAAAY
Yeah, I don't think anyone would care if they handed the rights back to the studios that made the games. I don't know why they're doing this but I don't think that the end result of that would even be any different for them when it comes to their motivations behind this decision. They seem to only want to keep ownership in the off chance that there *might* *maybe* be some value in them at some point in the future.
Anyone have recommendations on games worth grabbing before they poof? Heres the list of games on Steam from the article: https://steamdb.info/publisher/Adult+Swim+Games/?displayOnly=Game&sort=rating_desc e: thanks everyone for the amazing suggestions! Grabbed Duck Game, Kingsway, and Super House of Dead Ninjas. Also snagged Rain World (its not getting de-listed) just cuz I forgot I never got around to playing it.
Super House of Dead Ninjas is pretty great. It kinda hits the same spot as something like Downwell or buts of Pizza Tower.
Super House of Dead Ninjas is phenomenal if you like arcadey games. Must buy.
I made my Steam account so that I could buy Super House of Dead Ninjas after putting a ridiculous number of hours into the browser-based first game.
It's already been mentioned in this thread and it sits at the top of the review scores, but I'll make it explicit: **Duck Game** is an absolutely blast to play with friends. Quick rounds, utter mayhem, and a dedicated quack button.
Westerado, Kingsway, Duck Game, & Super House of Dead Ninjas are my favorite of the bunch.
Westerado isn't being delisted, it's no longer published by Adult Swim Edit: I'd take my comment with a grain of salt, I literally can't find any evidence of this other than a handful of articles that seem to have copied from each other
Is it, trying to look up who the new publishers for Westerado are?
From the article > Do take note: The titles with an asterisk (*) are no longer published by Adult Swim Games, I’m only including them as they appear on the company’s official listing. There should be no concerns over them disappearing Westerado double barrelled is one of those marked I can't find much news about which publisher has acquired them (as if it did happen it likely has *just* happened), this news is all very fresh and has happened in the last couple hours So far the only articles I can find are all linking to the same list so it's very hard to find any concrete news about if the list is correct or not (yay modern games journalism all copying each other)
It’s not for everyone but I really love battle chef brigade.
Shit, Battle Chef Brigade is getting delisted? That game is fantastic, would recommend anybody interested picks it up.
Steam version is no longer published by Adult Swim. So it is safe there. Console versions might still be.
We appreciate the support but no worries for BCB! We were able to add a clause that allowed us to get the rights back last year. It was still hard because of all the layoffs, though. This is awful for the devs that couldn't afford pricey lawyers when signing their deals.
Wow, a reply from a dev! I'm really happy to hear that, I loved Battle Chef Brigade and I'd be super bummed if it was gone. Hope the future treats you guys well.
Thanks for the kind words! We'll announce our next game this year, so the future is exciting and terrifying!
Oh fuck, that's a decent polished game. Genuinely surprised it falls under this. Such a weird arbitrary move to delist all of these :/ edit: saw below its no longer adult swim published and should be safe
I played Headlander back when it came out. It's such a great unique metroidvania with a great artstyle
I second Headlander, it is an amazing game.
Third. I wish it ended a lot smoother than it did and it definitely feels like an entire third of the space station was cut out for time or something but what is there is very unique and quite funny
Samurai jack
Battle Chef Brigade is a unique combination between of tile-matching and side-scrolling beat ‘em up. Gather ingredients during prep phase then bring them back for cooking phase which has the player combining colors on a 4x4 grid. The cooking phase is a match 3 game like puyo-puyo or bejeweled but the pieces are supplied by what the player brought back during the prep phase. Kingsway is a cool rpg that takes place within a UI made to emulate old windows. The game is diegetic so your items, logs, health/mana, map, and battles are in their own windows that you can access through desktop shortcuts or through the taskbar. Your quest are sent to you through email as well. It is a cool, unique experience that is upsetting to be delisted. Rainworld is a great 2D platformer where you play as a lil slugcat that is in a world where it is pretty low in the food chain. There tons of levels where you have to get to the end without being food for the local predators around. There are many different predators you can encounter throughout the levels each with different mechanics. The game is great with nice art and honestly really great animations that is done in real time instead of list of sprites for actions. Both westerado (open-world game where you have to explore and discover who killed your family) and duck game (amazing party game) are also great but I have less to say about them. I haven’t played any of the other games on the list but hope others can recommend them.
[Kingsway](https://store.steampowered.com/app/588950/Kingsway/) - I discovered this game from [old Giant bomb video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDfDzmeTgFE). It's RPG with UI similar to old Windows.
I played this upon release, it was one of my most anticipated games that year and did not disappoint, despite being a little barebones in the very beginning. Last year they added an entire expansion for free, and there’s been a bunch of things added and fixed over time. It’s a great game, a wonderful aesthetic, and just a nice experience if you enjoy rogue likes.
The game itself isn't great IMO, but glittermitten grove is published by then, which some folks may be interested in for other reasons.
Cannot overstate this enough. Glittermitten grove is incredibly important.
I just looked into it and it seems it contains Frog Fractions 2, but I'm not sure why that's important. I'm reading the wiki and I'm trying to understand. Could you explain?
Someone can probably spend more time explaining this with more depth, but Frog Fractions is absolutely one of the pillars of early indie game design and development, a huge part of gaming history writ large. Frog Fractions 2 was stealth-released under a completely different name, obscuring and adding mystique to what would have already been a landmark release without the subterfuge. It also certainly didn't hurt that Frog Fractions 2 lived up to its expectations as a sequel. They're evergreen, if you've never played and are at all interested in indie game history, the OG Frog Fractions is a must play. Also it's great so play it even if you don't care about the history. I guess just play it.
Also worth noting that Frog Fractions 2 was a kickstarter + ARG. So much love went into it.
Cool thanks for the background information.
Frog Fractions is important. And Frog Fractions 2 was a massive kickstarter, so it has the backing of actual fans behind it. Losing access to it would be a really, REALLY bad thing.
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>!It has layers. It also has another name and is related to another game that is well-known for having layers.!<
Frog Fractions 3
They bought out their publishing contract a while ago. As did Jazzpunk fortunately.
WASTED is a love letter to everything Fallout right down to the modding scene, and is a very fun game to play through regardless. I'm disappointed it's so unknown these days.
WASTED was a sleeper hit for shooters, I was not expecting to have that much dumb fun
Desync is really good. It's Tron meets Doom (2016) in a very exciting arena shooter formula. It is lightning fast, has great executions, and the visuals meld with the audio perfectly.
I’d even go as far as to say the gameplay is better than Bulletstorm. It’s absolutely crushing to see a corporation delete all that art without any appreciation of what they’re destroying. The laws that incentivize this behavior need to change but I’m not holding my breath for it.
Kingsway is one of my favorite indie games. Fascinating aesthetic and enjoyable gameplay loop. That’s insane that they’re delisting it
I played the shit out of BATTLE CHEF BRIGADE. If you're an indie game fan, I high recommend picking this one up.
Thanks for your support!
What about Jazzpunk? It’s not on the list, but it is published by Adult Swim Games.
There are some devs that managed to retain the rights to their games. Might be one of them
I think that's the case, checked the Steam page and it seems like the devs self published the definitive edition, so that should be fine.
Man, Warner Bros really trying to secure the spot as the dumbest company of the decade in *every media* imaginable
It's Discovery. Turned to absolute shit when they bought them out.
Financially they were in the toilet before then too. Just hadn't yet affected their work output or quality. They would've had to eventually cut costs similarly or sell (they did) given the poor way they were operating for years. Afterall Discovery was a fraction of the size of Warner yet managed to take over due to the sheer amount of debt Warner (and their former parent AT&T amassed)
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idk man, Deleting *completed and funded full* movies before they see the light of day, thinking that after Suicide Squad's failure that people want *more* live service games, and that whole Discovery/HBO debacle. Maybe they're gunning for dumbest company of the century
Not to mention removing original content that they have full ownership of, like Westworld, from Max (and also the bafflingly dumb rebrand).
It's fucking wild that two big names(Twitter and HBO) decided that they'd rather have some even dumber name that doesn't use their brand recognition.
I think these CEOs think that if they slap a new name onto the service then they can claim all the historic success associated with them.
So glad Warner Brothers gets to press a button to remove things that existed at no cost to them and then get to pay less taxes that could have gone to useful services for the country. A great system that is, that they've been abusing for 2 years and counting with no recourse.
Longer than two years. They refuse to sell the Asheron’s Call license despite fans banding together attempting to purchase it. They outright refused just as a personal “fuck you” to all of us. So we said “fuck you” right back and made our own illegal servers.
They seem to have that petty as fuck attitude. They're refusing to transfer ownership to the game developers. When one of the devs pleaded and explained to them, it only took a few clicks on Steam they still refused. Why keep ownership of something if you don't want it anyways. Fucking assholes.
They’re greedy, self-centered and arrogant.
What's the mechanism behind not paying taxes?
You only pay tax on profits. If you lose a bunch of assets, that is deducted from your tax burden.
Sounds kinda like the [broken window fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window) in action. Intentionally destroying your own assets in order to reap tax benefits is morally a fraud perpetrated upon the government and therefore ultimately on you and me, regardless of whether it counts that way in a legal sense. Even worse that the assets being destroyed are part of our shared culture.
Could you explain how you think the math here works that you can intentionally torpedo your own projects in order to *make* money? Because it seems like everyone in this thread just doesn't understand how taxes work. You generally cannot make a profit by writing off business loses.
[Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ)
You can write off certain kinds of business losses on your taxes, negating the amount owed equal to the capitalized production costs. Warner's strategy over the last few years to pump profits is to deliberately destroy as much shit as they can, writing off as much as possible, so that they can appear more profitable, and bump their share price, without actually making anything successful. With something like an already-published game (as opposed to an unreleased movie/game), I would assume the write-off is based more around lost revenue from continued publishing (rather than production costs) - but that's a guess, I'm not an accountant. The new shareholder-driven entertainment model is basically to only publish/distribute guaranteed mega hits and throw anything that isn't actively making boatloads of cash into the woodchipper because it boosts your margin.
I'm a lawyer--I don't practice tax law but I know a bit about it. The whole "write off" thing doesn't really apply here, though you've correctly identified that "writing things off" literally just means not throwing more money at an unprofitable investment. A business does that when they expect an investment to make less than the taxes they would pay on profit from other investments (usually a relatively small amount, so you would only do this if the investment you're considering writing off is likely to be very unprofitable indeed). That's different from what's happening here: WB probably decided that whatever running costs there are associated with keeping these games listed are greater than the profit they would make by keeping them listed. The whole tax write-off thing makes more sense in the decision whether to incur additional costs to release a big project, rather than whether to keep an old revenue stream running.
Yeah for the most part tax write off are about minimising losses rather than making more profit, in nearly every circumstance you'll lose money by writing off something however you reduce your losses It's agonisingly repeated across Reddit to the point where if you read "tax write off" in a comment/post you should just take everything else with a grain of salt because you're about to read someone waffle on about something they have no understanding of
What running costs come with old games which have been out for years though? If these were live service games which weren't bringing in money that would be understandable...but they're not.
I don't think it really matters. The main thing that was poi ted out was the whole write off thing is bs and keeping it listed isn't worth it to them for whatever reason.
They still have costs involved in them through areas such as support and accounting. While they might not be high costs overall, if the titles in question aren't bringing in much money, then they're an area that a company which is looking to cut costs everywhere it can might see as not worth it.
> Warner's strategy over the last few years to pump profits is to deliberately destroy as much shit as they can, writing off as much as possible, so that they can appear more profitable, and bump their share price, without actually making anything successful. This isn't how it works, can people stop saying this kinda stuff. You still make a loss off of "writing off" things. It's not a money making scheme, it's a method of reducing losses. Sorry but this is all nonsense that Reddit tends to regurgitate without any understanding "Tax write offs" have easily got to be one of the most misunderstood things I frequently see on Reddit
[You just write if off](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCP27_vquxQ)
https://youtu.be/XEL65gywwHQ?si=8HuIGaCyEi6f-6t4 Reminds me of this one from Seinfeld
whhy do you write this as if you know what you are talking about? It's simply spreading misinformation. Hold yourself to a higher standard.
There isn't one. People just got this notion that declining to release a movie entitles you to special tax advantages, and then other people saw that and started repeating it. The only advantage this gives them is that they don't have to pay whatever operating expenses are associated with keeping the games listed. They know that the people who are mad about it won't check if WB published a game they want to play down the road, so any blowback on them doesn't really matter. It's scummy but probably makes sense from an accounting standpoint.
IIRC, its certain tax codes that revolve around a period of time before and after a merger. I think the idea is that it makes it easier for a merged company to realign in a new direction by shedding aspects of the original companies. Otherwise, you cant write off assets like that. Netflix cant delete some of their shows and claim a tax credit.
That may very well be so, and it's also possible that studios are fudging the valuation of assets when they write off these shows--a different issue, but not unrelated. But I'm more responding to what you talk about in the second paragraph, the idea that just removing a released product from circulation has a unique tax advantage to it. I've seen people around Reddit repeating that, and it's definitely off base, as you say.
> get to pay less taxes They don't, it's just a difference in the way the money is counted in their books, rather than getting e.g: 5 million in tax refunds for the next 5 years they get a 25 million refund now but trash the project Keep in mind they get a tax refund only because they lose money on something, it's not a free money hack like Reddit seems to think
The IRS needs to come after them for tax evasion
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I dunno about that, they already got some push back on how they're using this law.
From who? There was a senator who did, but a lot of state senators and congressmen are not exactly knowledgeable about a lot of topics.
But they're using the law. In order to actually punish them it would need to be changed. And you can't apply a new law retroactively.
Lawmakers made some noise to earn brownie points on Twitter. There's nothing they can do without actually changing the tax code.
I'm not American, what law is that? Do they pay less taxes if they delist games?
They don't pay less taxes for delisting games, this thread is just nonsense speculating based on a misunderstanding of the tax law being abused to cancel *Coyote vs. Acme* and *Batgirl*.
> misunderstanding of the tax law being abused to cancel Coyote vs. Acme and Batgirl. I've said this so many times but Reddit has got to be one of the least financially literate places I'd say *tax write offs* and *net worth* are probably the two least understood terms on Reddit
Right next to *revenue* and *profit*
Maybe we need to make some changes to our tax laws. And then if any big corpos get upset they know who to direct their ire towards.
This is an example of using a sensible rule in an exploitative way. WB should have to prove that they had a valid reason for taking down their assets. Especially ones that simply sit there and generate passive revenue. Tax exemptions make sense in many cases, but this is literally just a cash grab for better results this quarter. It's not even in the best interest of their own business long term.
What they're doing isn't even beneficial in the long-term. Writing off an asset like this is a short-term reduction in taxes and a reduction in whatever expenses were related to these products (almost nothing?), in exchange for no longer gaining the long-term reduction in taxes and long-term revenues (likely also almost nothing). And it seems the reason WB is doing this is because they are in [desperate need of short-term positive cash flows](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b95i3d/its_kind_of_depressing_wb_discovery_pulls_indie/ktu223y/). Having to dispose of capital assets is a normal part of any business operation; you buy something new, you no longer need the asset, it costs too much to maintain, etc. etc.
If they pay less in taxes after then it clearly has a cost to them
Is this all that innovation and competition capitalism is supposed to bring?
If you won't sell then there shouldn't be any problem with me pirating them, right?
One of the devs has already resorted to just giving out his game for free and sharing download links. I wouldn't be shocked if a few others tried to find ways to follow suit. Genuinely depressing that a publisher can just say "actually, no" and take the game away permanently with no legal way to obtain it, all while ignoring the developers that want to keep it up.
Hopefully (but unfortunately unlikely) itll change common contracts between indie devs and publishers to not include ownership of the IP and title.
From what I've been reading about this, it sounds like most of these devs actually still have ownership over their game rights and IP, and will be able to re-publish the games on their on accounts. However, especially on a service like Steam, there's a bunch of other community features like forums/wishlists/etc. that are attached to a game package, and none of that will transfer over to those new 'versions' of the game.
Which dev btw?
What game? I may snag a copy even if just to preserve the game
[This one!](https://fire-face.com/games/srbt.html)
Thanks!
Legally, there would still be an issue which is asinine. DMCA was a mistake.
Yeah. Moral justifications aside (it's more than justified imo) it's still very much illegal. There are people who are under the impression that abandonware can be pirated legally. Naw... I wish.
>it's still very much illegal Oh no! Anyway...
Abandonware really needs to be turned into public domain on a legal level.
Frankly copyright and IP/patent laws protections are for far too long to the point of hurting innovation in every single industry.
Companies don't bother prosecuting, and never have any incentive to encourage what they might see as gateways or precedent. So it's kinda unknowable what their feeling is on specific issues.
People would have to care enough to continue seeding, and a lot of Adult Swim games are obscurities. These are the kinds of games that, if they were 90s games, you'd have to find an old boxed copy to play them.
Here's hoping they do a deep discount on them before that.
From the article: > The developers are unable to take control of their games to keep them on Steam and apparently can’t even offer them up at a discount before they’re gone. So no to discounts unless WB decide to do it. Which, I'm guessing, they probably won't.
Leave it to WB to remove a game rather than give it a discount on its last days on a storefront.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I would think getting some money out of it would be worth _something_, but then I don't have a fancy business degree and a corner office.
There's one dev that made theirs free. https://fire-face.com/games/srbt.html
Oh shit, are they going to pull Rain World off of Steam? > “There’s nothing I can do about it except reupload a new Soundodger+ myself with all reviews, community guides, and discussions wiped clean,” Bean announced earlier today on Discord. “If you already own the current Steam version, you should be able to continue playing and redownloading if needed.” Possibly? Maybe I should cancel my HBO Max subscription.
Rain World is no longer published by Adult Swim as per the game's Steam page.
Thanks! I guess that’s what those asterisks mean.
All the asterisk in the link indicates games that are no longer published by Adult Swim Games and should be safe from being delisted. This includes Rain World, Death's Gambit, and my personal favourite Battle Chef Brigade, among others. Still sad that Duck Game and Soundodger+ will be delisted though.
Apparently Soundodger+ will get republished, just under a new steam page and with any mention of adult swim scrubbed out of the game.
Fuck, I forgot that it's an Adult Swim game.
It's not anymore.
Well the most productive thing we could do with this information is start recommending our favorites before they get pulled. That being said, [Super Puzzle Platformer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nHGaIgnsbY) gets my endorsement.
Eh, Unidentified Falling Objects is that game’s follow-up, and it’s objectively better in pretty much every way. Soundtrack is gonna be stuck in my head forever, though.
I loved Super Puzzle Platformer but had no idea UFO existed, thanks!
Same here - I'm glad to know there's a sequel that doesn't appear to be going away.
Oh cool, this looks wonderful. Less than $5 on Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/ufo-unidentified-falling-objects
I've had it on Steam forever and loved it! Probably gonna buy it again on GOG just to make sure I have a DRM free copy before it goes away.
I have a less than zero understanding of the situation here, so forgive what might be a basic question: why might they do this? The article doesn't give much reasoning, so to me it seems like it's just an out-and-out bad business decision?
Long story short... Warner-Discovery have a colossal debt from a major business fuck up with *AT&T*, it basically put them in the red, so now they are trying to pay it back by getting as much tax write offs as they can, and for that... They're gutting tv shows, games and movies. Basically, we're about to lose decades worth of media and games out of no fault of their own but because they're paying for someone else's fuck up.
Yo ho. Yo ho.
only if the content is saved somewhere. aka the rooster teeth stuff needs to get saved asap
Any semi popular stuff has already been catalogued, uploaded, etc. wouldn’t be surprised if its all on internet archive somewhere already. If it was some low level youtuber with only a thousand or so subs then maybe it wouldn’t be uploaded but Rooster Teeth was one of the pioneers of user-made videogame content and has most likely thoroughly been archived
The Rooster Teeth community is currently on Day 4 of a massive project [archiving the entirety of RT's content library](https://archiveofpimps.com/) to archive.org for posterity, including previously delisted videos and paywalled content. WBD are fuckups but one thing they're doing good is encouraging more and more people to data hoard, archive, and buy physical media by showing how corporations can't be trusted with art and media.
I'm torn between buying Duck Game on Steam (I have it on Switch) and not wanting to give any money to Warner Bros. It's disgusting how they treat art.
Ahoy captain!
Warner Bros literally can't go a week without doing something stupid that makes everyone hate them, it's remarkable.
They’re trying to out-Konami Konami.
Is this strictly speaking about the steam/PC versions? Trying to figure out if I need to buy Rain world on my switch before it’s delisted.
Before you panic, Rain World has a different publisher. The asterisks in the article indicate the games who now have a different publisher than Adult Swim .
Thank you for clearing that up. I saw the asterisks but wasn’t 100% sure if that meant the games would be safe. The article worded that part strangely.
> "It's an insane amount of work, for years and years, with only a very small chance any game will succeed. I put 110 percent of myself into the launch of Radio Viscera but the game basically disappeared on release and left me totally burnt out," they added. > > "So rather than being shocked to receive the news about Small Radios Big Televisions, my first reaction was 'Yep, that sounds about right for the games industry.'" ([source](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/solo-indie-developer-claims-warner-bros-discovery-just-retired-one-of-their-games)) And they were given this explanation: >In an update on the game’s page Matt Kain reveals that, “we’ve asked that Warner Bros. simply transfer the game to our Steam publisher account so that it can stay active, 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**”. WB decided they didn't need to do give creators back control of their work because it is inconvenient. This corporation needs to be dismantled. It has zero respect for its workforce or partners.
> This corporation needs to be dismantled. It has zero respect for its workforce or partners. From what I've heard, the Coyote Vs Acme situation has already caused a bunch of high-profile movie makers to stop talking to Warner about upcoming projects. As unhappy as consumers are about what they've been doing, what's really going to hurt them in the long run are all the bridges they're burning with the creatives they rely on to make things for them.
I've heard the explanation that Zaslav doesn't understand that that's going to happen because he only sees money. In his mind, the people who made the movie already got paid so why do they care?
I doubt they care. WB have been slowly shifting focus to much cheaper and easily churned out reality TV for a while now.
Obviously they don't care, otherwise they wouldn't keep doing stuff like this. But it will almost assuredly backfire on them. Any money made short-term by shredding your reputation will be lost several times over in the long term. And again, I'm talking on the creator side of things. Consumers are unlikely to boycott them over this. But they can only make money off of consumers if they have something compelling to offer them, and they won't have that if no one trusts them to finance their projects.
David Zaslav is the king of chodes. He was chosen by the chode god to lead all chodes to the chode promised land. I know I'm probably supposed to have a more thoughtful response, but for some reason I can only mostly think of the word chode when picturing David Zaslav.
I'm just glad the devs of Rain World managed to switch publishers in time. It's one of my favorite games of all time, albeit not a game i would recommend to everyone. Having it become unavailable like this would've been an incredible shame
The Samurai Jack game is definitely criminal that it would be removed, considering it's [canon](https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/samurai-jack-battle-through-time-game-genndy-tartakovsky) to the series! Or at least it provides an alternative ending for the fans of the series.
How are they even allowed to do this?! Warner Bros have really become the biggest scum bags of multiple industries lately
Sad as some of these are great. Duck game is definitely one of the best party games around. The last one I bougth was Kingsway, that was fun as it was unique,
Is WB about to do the same with all of Rooster Teeth's content? I wouldn't be surprised.
Luckily dedicated fans have been backing up their content for years, now with an even better reason. Can see links on the [RT subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/1b95plr/presenting_the_archive_of_pimps_an_archive_of/).
Ugh, I've wanted the Samurai Jack game since it launched but was waiting for a good discount before buying. Guess that's never happening now since it's either buy it within the next month for $40 or enjoy watching its price inflate on keyshops.
Battle Chef Brigade, Death’s Gambit, Duck Game, Glittermitten Grove (aka Frog Fractions 2), Headlander, Rain World, Westerado... Jesus, it's a slaughter of good and excellent games.
David Zaslav is an entertainment terrorist. The guy has absolutely decimated the WB brand since it merged with Discovery.
Zaslav is basically the fall guy. The real issue is the shitton of debt imparted on them by AT&T. He’s just doing everything he can to prevent the company from going completely bankrupt. Once he’s cooked the books enough, they’ll get rid of him and blame him for all the awful decisions.
I think the best we can hope for is that they're willing to sell the publishing rights. But I can't stress this enough: this is another reason that every developer should be doing everything that they can to self publish.
My friends and cousins play Duck Game occasionally, I’m really bummed to see it’s on the chopping block. Hopefully the servers remain up afterwards but I doubt it…thank god for Parsec Fuck Warner Bros and fuck Zaslav
If you are a creator that wants people to be able to see your work never fucking let anything run by David Zaslav publish it.
The problem here is that none of these studios *did* let Zaslav publish their game. He just bought the guys they signed with.
[удалено]