| ▲ | Shorel 10 hours ago |
| Great resource. I have a fair number of them purchased. -- Back to the Future: The Game -- Blur -- Crysis -- Dark Souls -- Dirt 2 -- Dirt 3 -- Dirt Showdown -- F1 2010 - 2015 -- F1 Race Stars -- Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, 3, San Andreas, Vice City -- Grid (2019) -- Metro 2033 -- Prey (2006) -- Project CARS -- ToCA Race Driver 3 -- Transformers: War for Cybertron -- Transformers: Fall of Cybertron In most cases the games were delisted because of expiring licenses for cars, tracks, music, or studios being purchased by another studio. It's a bit sad as I consider Crysis and GTA to be an important part of gaming history. |
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| ▲ | benoau 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's all gaming history and a sadly-overlooked part of "Stop Killing Games". The worst part is the licenses that do exist are non-transferrable, so by the end of this century there will be zero licenses left for these games. They'll just be expunged until they become public domain perhaps in the middle of the next century - if any copies survive. And what's sad about that is we know for a fact games can survive and be enjoyed for decades, because we have seen this occur for the entire lineage of game-playing machines. |
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| ▲ | TitaRusell 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Same reason why Ace combat will never get a remake. If you use real brands in your videogame you as a developer need to know that it's on a death clock. |
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| ▲ | dghlsakjg 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Or just sign a licensing deal that doesn’t expire? | | |
| ▲ | zomiaen 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That presumes you can find someone to agree to those terms (which you won't), and if they do, that it isn't a prohibitively expensive fee (which it would be). | |
| ▲ | Uvix 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No licensor is going to do that. | | |
| ▲ | WillPostForFood 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | There are only 1,038 delisted games out of 100,000+ games on Steam, so there are willing licensors. Some may offer perpetual licenses, but want a royalty. It might be easier to delist a game than to manage the ongoing paperwork. | | |
| ▲ | Uvix 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Most games don't have that sort of licensed content to start with, so comparing to the total population of games isn't meaningful. Offering a perpetual license would limit the licensor's options (e.g. they could never offer someone else an exclusive license, nor could they adjust the rates if the brand becomes more popular, nor could they terminate if the developer/publisher becomes toxic), so I guess while it's theoretically possible I just don't see why they'd want to offer such a license. | | |
| ▲ | WillPostForFood an hour ago | parent [-] | | It is meaningful if the claim that perpetual licenses don't exist. They do. The terminology is often mocked, but comes in handy in case like this: "in perpetuity, throughout the universe". |
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| ▲ | HNisCIS 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I despise that licensing is a thing in video games. They're an art form and you should be able to depict whatever you want. I don't care if Porsche, John Deere or Sig Sauer get their feelings hurt because someone made art. | | |
| ▲ | voidfunc 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you call something a Porsche, John Deere, or a Sig Sauer and inaccurately represent it you're doing brand damage especially in the modern era where it could become a toxic meme on TikTok or whatever. That's no good and should be prevented. Developers could pony up for perpetual licenses if they cared but they don't. | | |
| ▲ | hakfoo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I was under the impression that most gameplay scenarios are positive exposure for real-world brands. The kid who spends 500 hours of his childhood driving around specific cars in games is developing brand preferences before he ever steps foot in a dealership. A smart brand would be eager to undercut their competitors for licensing-- even to the point of giving them away free, assuming the negotiate positive brand exposure. | |
| ▲ | xkcd1963 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm sure perp licences are more expensive, also nobody should be forbidden from using brands for artistic purposes. If a company licences the color "red" for their branding and it henceforth requires licencing for use they can shove that idea up their rear |
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| ▲ | breakin2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Do all of these still work? Is Steam obligated to continue to support old games until they no longer exist to support them, or can they stop supporting them
at any time? |
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| ▲ | skotobaza 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Depends on what you mean by "still work". If you bought them, you can download and play them. If you mean "Do they work on modern OS", it depends entirely on the game. You also have games that are still being sold but don't properly work on modern OSes without community patches (one example is Max Payne 1). |
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| ▲ | jaapz 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| At least the GTA games and metro 2033 are still available for purchase on steam, just the remastered versions. When they released those, the older versions were delisted |
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| ▲ | shantara 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Rereleased GTA games have a lot of iconic music removed from their radio soundtracks due to expired licenses. | | |
| ▲ | neckro23 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | At least for the PC versions of Vice City and San Andreas, the originals are missing the music too. A bunch of licenses expired 10 years after release and the Steam releases got updated accordingly. | |
| ▲ | doublerabbit 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It doesn't feel the same playing GTA4 without the music. |
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