Warner Bros. Discovery to remove Adult Swim Games from digital platforms

Warner Bros. Discovery intends to remove games published under the Adult Swim Games brand from digital storefronts, including Steam and console stores. This decision has affected many developers who have been notified that their games will be removed from sale within the next 60 days. For players, this will also lead to the loss of much of the online content associated with these games, The Verge reports.

Several developers of games published under the Adult Swim Games brand owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, have reported that the company has notified them that their games will soon be removed from digital storefronts on PC and consoles.

“It saddens me to announce that we received notice from Warner Bros. Discovery (the owners of Adult Swim Games) that Fist Puncher will be retired and removed from Steam in the next 60 days,” Matt Kane, one of the developers of Fist Puncher, wrote on the game’s Steam community page.

“As other devs have shared, I too am affected by Warner Bros Discovery (which ate Adult Swim) removing ALL their games from Steam and consoles. Within the next 60 days, Soundodger+ will be removed from Steam. They are refusing to transfer ownership to me,” as wrote the developer of Studio Bean on X.

Some developers affected by this decision have already announced plans to re-release their games on Steam on their own. However, they won’t be able to keep their existing community pages, Steam achievements, forum discussions, screenshots, and other content. All of this could be saved if Warner Bros. transferred the publishing rights to the developers, but they say that the company refuses to do so, citing a lack of resources.

At the same time, the process of transferring rights on Steam takes a few minutes. “I sent them the Steam Transfer link, explained that it takes 3 clicks, and they still refused, claiming it would only be fair to transfer no one’s games since they can’t do them all,” wrote in Studio Bean.

This move by Warner Bros. Discovery seems to be part of a broader cost-cutting strategy following the merger in 2022. Previously, the company has already practiced removing content from streaming libraries and shelving almost completed movie projects.