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.
Relevant link for Small Radios Big Televisions.
That’s all, folks!
I honestly don’t understand the math of not releasing movies and un-releasing games. People say tax purposes but I’d think streaming is essentially pure profit, hard to imagine not being able to make 20% of your money back or whatever credit you get for taxes.
It’s just a lie told often enough it became true.
Don’t believe everything you read on forums and try to research things for yourself.
Gotta get you hooked on the new drug that doesn’t have royalties they have to pay out.
They’re looking forward to all the AI generated crap, and the newer stuff they’ve already fucked the creators over in their contracts.
A big part is also residuals, they don’t want to have to keep paying actors, directors, and others involved with production, after the fact on a losing property. If there is zero income there are zero continued payments.
Think of it like Russian nesting dolls.
You got the production company that pays $100 million to make a movie. The production company is owned by a studio. Production company licenses the movie to the studio that owns it for $200 million. But it’s all the same ownership and no money changed hands. It’s just on paper. So now the $100 million movie cost $200 million. Then the studio licenses out the movie to the marketing company, which the studio also owns, for $300 million. Again no money changed hands and the value is all on paper.
Do that a couple more times and that’s how a movie that literally cost $100 million and made $500 million at the box office “barely broke even”.
Might be off on the layers, but I heard that description of movie accounting years ago.
Nice write up. Crazy how fat cats find ways to milk the cash cows.
I’m reminded of how the freaking NFL of all things is considered a non profit somehow. Simply due to the fact that they pay themselves so much money.
The NFL is a non profit, the teams are not. It still doesn’t make it right, though.
It’s also how the studios fuck over anyone involved who had “profit share %” in their contract.
The marketing costs eat up 100% of the profits, movie makes no money, yet the marketing company the advertising was sold to made half a bill…
They are losing money on streaming. It was so bad that they took their cash cow HBO and grouped it with their streaming divisions to improve their financial report. WBD is making insane decisions because their #1 goal is to increase free cash flow to pay off their debts, whereas most companies’ #1 goal is to “increase shareholder value.”
if you write it off as a tax write off you get to lie about “expected viewership” rather than actual viewership
You can’t write off expected future profits. That would essentially make income taxes meaningless. You can use a depreciation schedule for movies that you’ve produced and spread your tax savings out if you want(and you can avoid doing that by cancelling the movie all together and claiming it on your taxes now as a deduction), but that only matters when you’re actually making future money for the movie that you want to reduce your tax burden on. WB is losing a hell of a lot of money in the future to save money right now.
You clearly have no idea what a tax write off is. If you get 50$ profit spend 25$ on your business and pocket 25$ you pay taxes on your pocketed 25$ not the companies expenditures. That is a tax write off. A “company” doesn’t pay taxes.
The second part of this comment doesn’t make a lot of sense.
My understanding is that the tax system allows for the declaration of depreciation in assets as a business expense. This is fine for assets with transparent market valuations.
The part where this system could be abused is in willfully withholding the release of a movie, overvaluing the expected revenue, and then subsequently declaring the lack of revenue as a depreciation in assets which is then declared as a business expense to reduce the tax burden.
A clearer example of this, with very obvious fraud, might be:
- I paint a picture, spending about an hour of my time and 30$ of paint and canvas.
- I then organize a silent/shady auction for my painting, and secretly bid $1,000,000 for my own painting
- Then I decide to not pay for it and at the same time I decide to retract the sale instead of opening it up.
- On paper I have a $1,000,000 asset that has been depreciated by $1,000,000 which allows me to deduct $1,000,000 from my other taxes.
So obviously this example was fraudulous. It’s possible that the expected revenue on the cases involving movies was estimated transparently and was fair, because of market forces.
Maybe something more scummy was at play?
Who knows.
Luckily Steam will keep Duck Game in my library, but I dread the moment Valve leadership changes. Steam has existed for 20 years, and I naively hope I’ll still be able to play my games in 40 years on my Steck Deck.
Well, since you retain a license to the content until you or valve closes your account, you should be covered.
According to their own personal Steam Subscriber Agreement, you only forfit licenses when you end your subscription (like EA Play) or when the main service contract ends (close your account).
Although they may try, but then you can still sue for breach of contract.
Steam can remove games from your account. Their definition of a subscription is different than what you think it is:
the rights to access and/or use any Content and Services accessible through Steam are referred to in this Agreement as “Subscriptions.”
The clause allowing games to be removed from a group of people:
Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally,
That’s as things may be now. What we have consistently seen is that company’s can often change their policy whenever they want. It’s happened too many times already to think the current lunch is future proof
Okay I (don’t, actually but whatevs) understand how you can do some tax-swindle capitalist-bs with unrealised stuff but how are they making money from “retiring” games (and is it the same scam as with the animated shows that you can only watch now if you sail the high seas?)?
Even if WB pursues Erasure, we will Always have these games in our heart.
And our harddrives ;)
They already have. Can you install Super Monsters Ate My Condo? Released 10 years ago, great android game, gone now.
Never heard of it, is it zombies ate my friends?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=zombies+ate+my+condo+apk&t=fpas&ia=web
Android games are different because old ones use currently unsupported libraries, and you’re not supposed to run old versions of android. That’s more a problem with how Google thinks android has to work.
PC games and PlayStation store games don’t really make sense to de-list like this because win10 is very backwards-compatible with software, and PS4/PS5 games that are released and work don’t need any upkeep.
From wikipedia:
Monsters Ate My Condo was an iOS tile-matching video game developed by PikPok and released on September 15, 2011 by Adult Swim Games for $0.99. A sequel, Super Monsters Ate My Condo, was released in 2012.
Note: I did not test/check/scan any of the files I’m pointing to!
Found these APKs for SMAMC to sideload on Android: apkcombo / apkmonk
And this modded SMAMC APK (unlimited money): happymod
Also this IPA for (older?) iPhones: archive.org
Bonus: MAMC APK: apkcombo
Bonus: MAMC modded APK: happymod
If you’re buying games these days, STOP buying non physical media
While I kinda agree, you can still kill switch consoles and physical games with software easily. This is why I prefer buying off gog
Better still, stick with DRM free games.
I bought GTA 5 as a disc back then. You can’t even install it without the Rockstar Game Launcher. What do the discs do for me?
didn’t think it was possible to be worse than aol time warner but zazlav did it.
As if I’d need any additional reason to not buy Warner Bros games. So stupid of them.
Lol good luck erasing the thousands of torrents of these games, piracy makes deleting something impossible, but im sure theyll try!
Yet another reason piracy is right and just
I think even Gaben will approve
Zazlov: Gets $223M annual salary
If he gets $223M a year for being a detriment to society, I should be getting at least $446M for being relatively neutral.
This picture is kinda wimpy. Zaslav had led the company through a total stock drop of almost $16 per share yet his comp has gone up almost 100% based on the figures I’ve been able to find. Granted he’s not getting the lucrative options he started with but that doesn’t seem to stop the other comp from going up.
I’ve never encountered a better argument for piracy and drm-free content than abandonware
Yeah. I’ve heard multiple times how entire careers are made supporting abandonware. The US military I believe pays microsoft millions a year to add security updates to their own version of Windows XP so old software can keep working.
they pay a shitton of money to pull old devs out of retirement, because noone can code cobol on the required level anymore
But despite the fact we don’t want money for it we hate the idea of you getting it for free more
The disparity in wealth should shrink instead of grow.
There should be a law in the United States - if you stop selling it, 1 year later you lose your copyright and it becomes public domain.
The US won’t. The EU probably will.
If you can remove content from the marketplace for a tax write off, the removed content should become public property.
That actually makes a ton of sense. We fucking paid for it after all.
This is the way
It exists, but isn’t 1 year. Closer to 20 I think? There are also deals that require constant usage, like Sony’s hold on spiderman. Quick search says 5 years 9 months for them to hold on to it.
Back to copyright, there was a game Wizards of the Coast acquired from Gygax’s company that a neonazi and one of Gygax’s sons tried to use claiming WoTC abandoned it. It was blatantly racist so one of the few times people were rooting for WoTC to win. WoTC hadn’t made a new game, but claimed they were still selling manuals digitally.
Edit might be trademark rather than copyright.
It could be trademark, certainly isn’t copyright. Trademark is use it and defend it, or lose it. Common trademarks that were lost are kleenex (tissue) and band-aid (bandage). Patents vary somewhat by industry, but in the computer world last 20 years. I think copyright is up to life of the creator plus 70 years, or 70 years if it’s owned by a company. This is why we hear about JRR Tolkiens kids having lawsuits about stuff related to LoTR, and why Steamboat Willy only recently went public domain.
