Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim unclear.

The media conglomerate’s planned removal of those games echoes cuts from its film and television business; Warner Bros. Discovery infamously scrapped plans to release nearly complete movies Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, and removed multiple series from its streaming services. If Warner Bros. does go through with plans to delist Adult Swim’s games from Steam and digital console stores, 18 or more games could be affected.

News of the Warner Bros. plan to potentially pull Adult Swim’s games from Steam and the PlayStation Store was first reported by developer Owen Reedy, who released puzzle-adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions through the label in 2016. Reedy said on X Tuesday the game was being “retired” by Adult Swim Games’ owner. He responded to the company’s decision by making the Windows PC version of Small Radios Big Televisions available to download for free from his studio’s website.

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    … why? They’re complete products that just sit there and make money for almost no effort

    • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I think we’re in a slow burning culture war that is trying to erase everything but one single mindset of thought.

      Discovery channel felt it early, and now that same sentiment is spreading everywhere. Cut away the vibrant ecosystem for a single channel, controllable narrative.

      And it’s across every fuckdamn media.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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        10 months ago

        Sometimes I feel I’m fortunate to have ADHD. Until I think about my life not on the Web.

        • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          As an aside: I’ve begun to think that ADHD and some other neurodivergences are actually evolutionary responses to the exponentially increasing amount of data processing that modern humanity does on a daily basis, just not having long enough time for natural selection to smooth out the rough edges yet. Give it a few hundred thousand years or so.

          Like we are those prehistoric transition mudskipper-like fish things that traded part of their swim control for the ability to absorb oxygen through their swim bladders, they couldn’t swim as well as swimmy things, couldn’t walk as well as walky things today, but at that moment it was the only chordate to be able to hunt the shore.

          We’re species transition in action maybe.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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            10 months ago

            As an aside: I’ve begun to think that ADHD and some other neurodivergences are actually evolutionary responses to the exponentially increasing amount of data processing that modern humanity does on a daily basis, just not having long enough time for natural selection to smooth out the rough edges yet. Give it a few hundred thousand years or so.

            N-no, it’s happening too fast to be explained by recent evolution. It’s been there, just psychiatry has only recently become interested in people without hallucinations, inability to speak and murderous impulses.

            I’d rather imagine that a population needs a certain proportion of explorers or people behaving more chaotically.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        This is honestly the only reasonable explanation. Adult Swim was millennial counterculture, and now there is an effort to undo it and erase it from mainstream history.

        • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          That seals it, digital piracy is the freedom to shape our culture in the face of greedy corporations. A moral good.

    • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      I think they’re trying to close adult swim games. If that happens, the money from sales go nowhere, so they’re delisting the games too.

      The whole Warner Bros thing is such garbage.