Fixing Sonic's reputation by removing his own history?
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00:00 Though gaming's digital revolution of the last decade plus has made it easier than ever
00:04 for developers to get their games in players' hands, it's also demonstrated the worrying
00:09 future for game preservation, where digital titles can be removed from a storefront with
00:14 no warning whatsoever.
00:16 We recently documented a number of games so uniformly awful that they were delisted from
00:21 their respective platforms, but some reasons for delisting can get a little weird.
00:27 So with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 Video Games Delisted For
00:32 Insane Reasons.
00:33 10.
00:34 It Pissed Off The Chinese Government - Devotion
00:37 Devotion was a psychological horror game released on February 19th, 2019 by Red Candle Games,
00:44 the team behind 2017's highly acclaimed horror title Detention.
00:48 Though Devotion received strong reviews upon release, within days players discovered that
00:53 the Taiwanese game featured an easter egg mocking China's president, Xi Jinping.
00:59 A piece of Chinese seal script referring to Jinping as "Winnie the Pooh", referencing
01:04 a famous internet meme derisively comparing the leader to the beloved children's icon,
01:08 was found in the game.
01:10 As a result, Devotion was review-bombed on Steam by allegedly Chinese players, and though
01:15 Red Candle promptly patched out the offending material, complaints continued to mount over
01:20 aspects of the game which were perceived as anti-China.
01:24 Devotion was pulled from Steam in China, but just six days after its release, Red Candle
01:29 delisted the game globally, citing both technical difficulties and the pressure put upon them
01:34 by the backlash, which included their own publishers cutting ties with them.
01:38 In December 2020, it was announced that the game would be returning for sale on the good
01:42 old Game Store, yet mere hours later, GOG reversed their stance, apparently due to "receiving
01:49 many messages from gamers asking them not to sell it".
01:52 Devotion finally became available once more in March 2021, when Red Candle opened their
01:58 own digital store where they were free to sell whatever they wanted.
02:01 9.
02:02 It was a secret crypto-miner - Abstractism
02:05 Abstractism was released on Steam in March 2018, and was marketed as a relaxing platformer
02:10 with an ASMR soundtrack and "no game over", in turn encouraging players to get into a
02:16 trance-like state while playing it for hours on end.
02:19 However, the game from Studio Okolo Union was delisted four months later following an
02:24 investigation into its disproportionate CPU and GPU usage.
02:30 It was eventually discovered that Abstractism contained secret cryptocurrency mining software,
02:36 and that the developers even encouraged players to just leave the game running all day, allowing
02:41 the miner to make the most of each customer's hardware.
02:44 Beyond the sheer deception of surreptitiously installing something the player had no knowledge
02:49 of, crypto-mining software could also hamper the performance of a player's computer and
02:53 even increase their electricity bills.
02:56 Other players began to report that the developer was also selling fraudulent items on the Steam
03:00 marketplace, and so Abstractism was pulled from Steam along with Okolo Union themselves.
03:06 8.
03:07 A pirate version was published on Steam - The Sinking City
03:10 Frogwares' action-adventure game The Sinking City was released in June 2019, but it ended
03:15 up being delisted from digital platforms in August 2020 as a result of a dispute between
03:20 Frogwares and their original publisher, Nacon.
03:23 Frogwares claimed that Nacon had missed promised payments to them, and also attempted to stake
03:27 ownership of the Sinking City IP, which still belonged to the developer.
03:32 Everything seemed to be resolved in February 2021, however when the game returned to Steam,
03:37 Frogwares soon enough made a post urging players not to buy it.
03:41 Their reasoning?
03:42 Well, they alleged that Nacon republished the game without their permission, downloading
03:46 The Sinking City from another storefront, Games Planet, editing the game's code to
03:50 conceal its origin, and then re-uploading it to Steam.
03:54 Frogwares accused Nacon of both hacking and piracy, and after the game was added and removed
03:59 from Steam numerous times, it was decisively delisted in March 2021 after Frogwares filed
04:05 a DMCA takedown request.
04:07 The game was finally re-listed three months later, though the outcome of Frogwares'
04:11 dispute with Nacon hasn't yet been made public.
04:14 7.
04:15 The publisher falsified Steam reviews, Guardians of Ember
04:18 MMORPG Guardians of Ember was released on Steam Early Access in 2016, and ended up being
04:24 delisted in February 2018 after Valve discovered that publisher Incel Games had pressured its
04:31 employees to buy both the game and write a positive review of it on Steam.
04:36 A leaked email allegedly written by the studio's CEO not-so-subtly implied that employees'
04:42 jobs were at risk if they didn't play ball and inflate the Steam reviews of not only
04:47 Guardians of Ember, but also another of the studio's MMORPGs, Wild Buster Heroes of
04:54 Titan.
04:55 Almost a year following the delisting, it was announced that Guardians of Ember was
04:58 being resurrected as a free-to-play title after being acquired by another publisher,
05:03 Gameforge.
05:04 This relaunch didn't last long though, as in February 2020, the game was shut down for
05:08 good, seemingly unable to escape the shadow of all that PR.
05:13 6.
05:14 Disney stopped paying for the DRM license, Tron Evolution
05:17 Third-person action game Tron Evolution was released in late 2010 to tie in with the blockbuster
05:23 film Tron Legacy, and despite mixed reviews, became a bit of a cult fave in the years following
05:28 its release.
05:29 The game's commercial underperformance caused developer Propaganda Games to shut down less
05:33 than two months after launch, yet bizarrely the game became entirely unplayable in April
05:39 2019 because of its Securom DRM implementation.
05:43 Basically, publisher Disney Interactive Studios stopped paying their subscription-free to
05:47 Securom to provide authentication services for the game, meaning that it could no longer
05:52 be launched or even installed.
05:55 As a result, Tron Evolution was pulled from Steam almost a decade after its original release,
05:59 and though Disney did promise to look into the issue, to date they either haven't renewed
06:04 the DRM or, ideally, removed the authentication altogether.
06:08 5.
06:09 The studio changed their name to Very Positive - Emoji Evolution
06:13 Sometimes a developer's desperate attempt to part players with their cash is so ingeniously
06:18 underhanded that you kinda have to give them a begrudging measure of credit.
06:23 And that's certainly the case with the studio behind puzzle game Emoji Evolution, who attempted
06:28 to exploit Steam's review system by changing their developer and publisher name to Very
06:34 Positive.
06:35 Given that Very Positive is one of the top rating categories on Steam's user reviews,
06:40 and the developer/publisher's name appears just below it, it's easy for players to take
06:44 a fleeting glance at the game's Steam page and assume that it received, well, a Very Positive
06:49 rating.
06:50 It didn't take long for Valve to catch wind of this deception, prompting them to swiftly
06:54 remove Emoji Evolution from Steam, along with the dubiously monikered company behind it.
07:00 The developer at least appeared to take it in their stride, hilariously retorting to
07:04 the delisting, "If making awful games is not allowed on Steam, why haven't they already
07:10 suspended the CDPR account?"
07:12 4.
07:13 Because of the pandemic in China - Plague Inc.
07:15 RTS pandemic simulation game Plague Inc. was initially released back in 2012, though understandably
07:22 enjoyed quite an uptick in popularity following the onset of the pandemic.
07:27 But in late February 2020, roughly two weeks before the World Health Organization officially
07:31 declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Plague Inc. was removed from all digital storefronts in
07:37 China, allegedly due to the Chinese government believing that the game contained "illegal
07:42 content".
07:43 Given that the takedown notice didn't specify which content was lawbreaking in China, it
07:48 was widely assumed that the Chinese government had the game delisted due to the onset of
07:53 the pandemic, which first registered cases in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
07:57 With Plague Inc. becoming a top-selling app in China as the virus spread, it suddenly
08:02 disappeared.
08:03 3.
08:04 The lead developer made a death threat against Gabe Newell - Paranautical Activity.
08:08 FPS Paranautical Activity was released on the platform on October 20th, 2014.
08:13 However, in what might be a world record for a developer firebombing their own work, the
08:18 game ended up delisted just one day later.
08:21 Paranautical Activity was pulled from Steam after the game's creator grew frustrated
08:26 that it still had the Early Access label, despite now being in full retail release.
08:31 More to the point, they actually tweeted about wanting to kill Valve co-founder Gabe Newell
08:37 for the mistake, prompting Steam to respond by delisting the game and ceasing all business
08:43 with the company Code Avarice.
08:45 The creator expressed remorse for this post, though ultimately failed to mend the rift
08:49 with Steam and eventually decided to sell Paranautical Activity to a new company, who
08:54 republished a new Deluxe Atonement Edition version of the game on the platform in February
08:59 2015.
09:00 Code Avarice was subsequently allowed to publish their future games, Arc Shot and Seasons Beatings,
09:05 on Steam, but neither of them quite made a dent.
09:08 2.
09:09 To increase the value of the franchise, every bad to mediocre Sonic game.
09:14 In October 2010, Sega announced that any Sonic game with an average Metacritic score would
09:19 be pulled from physical retail catalogues and any digital storefronts in an attempt
09:24 to "increase the value" of the then-flagging franchise.
09:29 So the likes of 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the
09:34 Black Knight, Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Riders Zero Gravity, which posted terrible to underwhelming
09:40 Metacritic scores, ranging from 43 to 69, were all pulled out of circulation to make
09:46 way for new Sonic games, Sonic Colors, Sonic Free Riders and Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
09:52 That's a lot of Sonic, my friends.
09:55 The idea, ironically, was to avoid oversaturating the brand, and in Sega's defence, both Sonic
10:00 Colors and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 did go on to become critical and commercial hits.
10:05 Even so, pulling bad games off the market in an attempt to rescue an ailing brand was
10:10 basically unheard of up to this point, and it was a number of years before Sega relented
10:15 and restored the maligned Sonic titles.
10:18 1.
10:19 For being too old, Pandemic the Board Game.
10:22 The classic board game, Pandemic, was adapted into digital form in 2013, yet in early 2022
10:28 it was quietly delisted from Steam by publisher Asmodee Digital.
10:33 While players assumed at first that this was due to a licensing agreement with board game
10:36 developer Z-Man Games coming to an end, that actually wasn't the case at all.
10:41 In a correspondence with PC Gamer, Asmodee hilariously admitted that the truth was both
10:46 simple and a little bit odd.
10:48 The reason being the fact that Pandemic was just damn old now.
10:52 They said quote "The Pandemic app was released nine years ago, and we no longer feel the
10:57 current quality and reliability of the game is on par with what Pandemic deserves on digital
11:02 platforms.
11:03 The time has come to make way for the digital future of Pandemic."
11:07 The company followed up that the decision was made quote "with a heavy heart and for
11:12 multiple reasons that we cannot disclose."
11:15 And after reading between the lines, it's easy to suspect that Z-Man Games may have
11:19 commissioned a glossy new reboot of the series due for release soon, albeit without this
11:24 developers involvement.
11:26 Otherwise, delisting it without having a replacement in the works just seems totally
11:30 bizarre.
11:31 So that's our list, what do you guys think about the delisting of these video games and
11:36 are there any intriguing stories that I missed off here?
11:39 While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe and
11:42 head over to WhatCultureGaming for more lists and news like this every single day.
11:46 Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching and I'll see