Fixing Sonic's reputation by removing his own history?
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00:00Though gaming's digital revolution of the last decade plus has made it easier than ever
00:04for developers to get their games in players' hands, it's also demonstrated the worrying
00:09future for game preservation, where digital titles can be removed from a storefront with
00:14no warning whatsoever.
00:16We recently documented a number of games so uniformly awful that they were delisted from
00:21their respective platforms, but some reasons for delisting can get a little weird.
00:27So with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 Video Games Delisted For
00:32Insane Reasons.
00:3410.
00:35It Pissed Off The Chinese Government, Devotion
00:37Devotion was a psychological horror game released on February 19th, 2019 by Red Candle Games,
00:44the team behind 2017's highly acclaimed horror title Detention.
00:48Though Devotion received strong reviews upon release, within days players discovered that
00:53the Taiwanese game featured an easter egg mocking China's president, Xi Jinping.
00:59A piece of Chinese seal script referring to Jinping as Winnie the Pooh, referencing a
01:04famous internet meme derisively comparing the leader to the beloved children's icon,
01:08was found in the game.
01:10As a result, Devotion was review-bombed on Steam by allegedly Chinese players, and though
01:15Red Candle promptly patched out the offending material, complaints continued to mount over
01:20aspects of the game which were perceived as anti-China.
01:24Devotion was pulled from Steam in China, but just six days after its release, Red Candle
01:29delisted the game globally, citing both technical difficulties and the pressure put upon them
01:34by the backlash, which included their own publishers cutting ties with them.
01:38In December 2020, it was announced that the game would be returning for sale on the good
01:42old Game Store, yet mere hours later, GOG reversed their stance, apparently due to receiving
01:49many messages from gamers asking them not to sell it.
01:52Devotion finally became available once more in March 2021, when Red Candle opened their
01:58own digital store where they were free to sell whatever they wanted.
02:019.
02:02It was a secret crypto-miner, Abstractism.
02:05Abstractism was released on Steam in March 2018, and was marketed as a relaxing platformer
02:10with an ASMR soundtrack and no game over, in turn encouraging players to get into a trance-like
02:16state while playing it for hours on end.
02:19However, the game from Studio Okolo Union was delisted four months later following an
02:24investigation into its disproportionate CPU and GPU usage.
02:30It was eventually discovered that Abstractism contained secret cryptocurrency mining software,
02:36and that the developers even encouraged players to just leave the game running all day, allowing
02:41the miner to make the most of each customer's hardware.
02:44Beyond the sheer deception of surreptitiously installing something the player had no knowledge
02:49of, crypto-mining software could also hamper the performance of a player's computer and
02:53even increase their electricity bills.
02:56Other players began to report that the developer was also selling fraudulent items on the Steam
03:00marketplace, and so Abstractism was pulled from Steam, along with Okolo Union themselves.
03:068.
03:07A pirate version was published on Steam, The Sinking City.
03:10Frogwares' action-adventure game The Sinking City was released in June 2019, but it ended
03:15up being delisted from digital platforms in August 2020 as a result of a dispute between
03:20Frogwares and their original publisher, Nacon.
03:23Frogwares claimed that Nacon had missed promised payments to them, and also attempted to stake
03:27ownership of The Sinking City IP, which still belonged to the developer.
03:32Everything seemed to be resolved in February 2021, however when the game returned to Steam,
03:37Frogwares soon enough made a post urging players not to buy it.
03:41Their reasoning?
03:42Well, they alleged that Nacon republished the game without their permission, downloading
03:46The Sinking City from another Starfront game's planet, editing the game's code to conceal
03:51its origin, and then re-uploading it to Steam.
03:54Frogwares accused Nacon of both hacking and piracy, and after the game was added and removed
03:59from Steam numerous times, it was decisively delisted in March 2021 after Frogwares filed
04:05a DMCA takedown request.
04:07The game was finally re-listed 3 months later, though the outcome of Frogwares' dispute
04:12with Nacon hasn't yet been made public.
04:147.
04:15The publisher falsified Steam reviews, Guardians of Ember
04:18MMORPG Guardians of Ember was released on Steam Early Access in 2016, and ended up being
04:24delisted in February 2018 after Valve discovered that publisher Incel Games had pressured its
04:30employees to buy both the game and write a positive review of it on Steam.
04:36A leaked email allegedly written by the studio's CEO not-so-subtly implied that employees'
04:42jobs were at risk if they didn't play ball and inflate the Steam reviews of not only
04:47Guardians of Ember, but also another of the studio's MMORPGs, Wild Buster Heroes of
04:54Titan.
04:55Almost a year following the delisting, it was announced that Guardians of Ember was
04:58being resurrected as a free-to-play title after being acquired by another publisher,
05:03Gameforge.
05:04This relaunch didn't last long, though, as in February 2020, the game was shut down
05:08for good, seemingly unable to escape the shadow of all that poor PR.
05:136.
05:14Disney stopped paying for the DRM license, Tron Evolution
05:17Third-person action game Tron Evolution was released in late 2010 to tie in with the blockbuster
05:23film Tron Legacy, and despite mixed reviews, became a bit of a cult fave in the years following
05:28its release.
05:29The game's commercial underperformance caused developer Propaganda Games to shut down less
05:33than two months after launch, yet bizarrely the game became entirely unplayable in April
05:392019 because of its Securom DRM implementation.
05:43Basically, publisher Disney Interactive Studios stopped paying their subscription-free to
05:47Securom to provide authentication services for the game, meaning that it could no longer
05:52be launched or even installed.
05:54As a result, Tron Evolution was pulled from Steam almost a decade after its original release,
05:59and though Disney did promise to look into the issue, to date, they either haven't
06:03renewed the DRM or, ideally, removed the authentication altogether.
06:085.
06:09The studio changed their name to Very Positive Emoji Evolution
06:13Sometimes, a developer's desperate attempt to part players with their cash is so ingeniously
06:18underhanded that you kinda have to give them a begrudging measure of credit.
06:23And that's certainly the case with the studio behind puzzle game Emoji Evolution, who attempted
06:28to exploit Steam's review system by changing their developer and publisher name to Very
06:34Positive.
06:35Given that Very Positive is one of the top rating categories on Steam's user reviews
06:40and the developer's slash publisher's name appears just below it, it's easy for players
06:44to take a fleeting glance at the game's Steam page and assume that it received, well,
06:48a Very Positive rating.
06:50It didn't take long for Valve to catch wind of this deception though, prompting them to
06:54swiftly remove Emoji Evolution from Steam, along with the dubiously monikered company
06:59behind it.
07:00The developer at least appeared to take it in their stride though, hilariously retorting
07:04to the delisting, quote,
07:05If making awful games is not allowed on Steam, why haven't they already suspended the CDPR
07:11account?
07:124.
07:13Because of the pandemic in China, Plague Incorporated
07:16RTS pandemic simulation game Plague Inc. was initially released back in 2012, though understandably
07:22enjoyed quite an uptick in popularity following the onset of the pandemic.
07:27But in late February 2020, roughly two weeks before the World Health Organization officially
07:31declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Plague Inc. was removed from all digital storefronts in
07:37China, allegedly due to the Chinese government believing that the game contained, quote,
07:43Given that the takedown notice didn't specify which content was law-breaking in China, it
07:48was widely assumed that the Chinese government had the game delisted due to the onset of
07:53the pandemic, which first registered cases in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
07:57With Plague Inc. becoming a top-selling app in China as the virus spread, it suddenly
08:02disappeared.
08:033.
08:04The lead developer made a death threat against Gabe Newell, Paranautical Activity
08:08FPS Paranautical Activity was released on the platform on October 20th, 2014.
08:13However, in what might be a world record for a developer firebombing their own work, the
08:18game ended up delisted just one day later.
08:21Paranautical Activity was pulled from Steam after the game's creator grew frustrated
08:26that it still had the Early Access label, despite now being in full retail release.
08:31More to the point, they actually tweeted about wanting to kill Valve co-founder Gabe Newell
08:37for the mistake, prompting Steam to respond by delisting the game and ceasing all business
08:43with the company Code Avarice.
08:45The creator expressed remorse for this post, though ultimately failed to mend the rift
08:49with Steam, and eventually decided to sell Paranautical Activity to a new company, who
08:54republished a new Deluxe Atonement Edition version of the game on the platform in February
08:592015.
09:00Code Avarice was subsequently allowed to publish their future games, Arc Shot and Seasons'
09:05meetings on Steam, but neither of them quite made a dent.
09:082.
09:09To increase the value of the franchise, every bad to mediocre Sonic game.
09:14In October 2010, Sega announced that any Sonic game with an average Metacritic score would
09:19be pulled from physical retail catalogues, and any digital storefronts in an attempt
09:24to quote, increase the value of the then-flying franchise.
09:29So the likes of 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the
09:34Black Knight, Sonic Unleashed, and Sonic Riders Zero Gravity, which posted terrible
09:40to underwhelming Metacritic scores, ranging from 43 to 69, were all pulled out of circulation
09:46to make way for new Sonic games, Sonic Colors, Sonic Free Riders, and Sonic the Hedgehog
09:514.
09:52That is a lot of Sonic, my friends.
09:55The idea, ironically, was to avoid oversaturating the brand, and in Sega's defence, both Sonic
10:00Colors and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 did go on to become critical and commercial hits.
10:05Even so, pulling bad games off the market in an attempt to rescue an ailing brand was
10:10basically unheard of up to this point, and it was a number of years before Sega relented
10:15and restored the maligned Sonic titles.
10:181.
10:19For being too old, Pandemic the Board Game.
10:22The classic board game, Pandemic, was adapted into digital form in 2013, yet in early 2022,
10:28it was quietly delisted from Steam by publisher Asmodee Digital.
10:33While players assumed at first that this was due to a licensing agreement with board game
10:36developer Z-Man Games coming to an end, that actually wasn't the case at all.
10:41In a correspondence with PC Gamer, Asmodee hilariously admitted that the truth was both
10:46simple and a little bit odd.
10:48The reason being the fact that Pandemic was just damn old now.
10:52They said, quote,
10:53The Pandemic app was released 9 years ago, and we no longer feel the current quality
10:58and reliability of the game is on par with what Pandemic deserves on digital platforms.
11:03The time has come to make way for the digital future of Pandemic, end quote.
11:07The company followed up that the decision was made, quote, with a heavy heart and for
11:12multiple reasons that we cannot disclose, end quote.
11:15And after reading between the lines, it's easy to suspect that Z-Man Games may have
11:19commissioned a glossy new reboot of the series due for release soon, albeit without this
11:24developer's involvement.
11:26Otherwise, delisting it without having a replacement in the works just seems totally bizarre.
11:31So that's our list, what do you think about the delisting of these video games and are
11:36there any intriguing stories that I missed off here?
11:39While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe and
11:42head over to WhatCultureGaming for more lists and news like this every single day.
11:46And even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.