Night School Studio sent out an email to owners of Oxenfree on itch.io, to notify that it's going to be completely removed from the store on October 1st.
It's already been delisted and so the store page only shows up if you own it, which is what usually happens when developers / publishers properly move on, something we've seen a few times on Steam with various licensing issues. Usually though, it stays up for existing owners to download it.
Here, Night School Studio are completely removing it, so you won't be able to even download it from October 1st.
A few people sent this in but I've also been shared the email that was sent too (thanks, retrogunner):
No reason has actually been given as to why. Most likely, this is coming from Netflix, who actually acquired Night School Studio back in 2021. Probably as they're trying to pull in more people to play games under their umbrella directly on Netflix.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: razing32And once again i have to differ to people that use GOG.
I use Steam for convenience and proton but stories like these make me realize that when push comes to shove its best to have a backup copy of your game.
I think you mean 'defer' rather than 'differ'.
Some games on Steam can be played without Steam account so you can just tarball 'em up and make backups.
Anyway: a game developer getting bought and the buyer screwing over the customers? Colour me surprised. As surprised as I am every day that the sun rises in the east.
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buckysrevenge Sep 9
Quoting: MamboThank you for the heads up, I had missed the message from itch.
OxenFree was included in the bundle for racial justice and equality back in 2020.
FYI, they're are over 800k people that donated to this bundle, I know the devs didn't see any of that money, but that's a lot of people that own this game
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IrisNebula Sep 9
Quoting: TheBardQuoting: razing32stories like these make me realize that when push comes to shove its best to have a backup copy of your game.
Quoting: IrisNebulaYou bought your game, you got your game. It has given you a DRM-Free installer that you can use whenever you want, as many times as you want. Even if new downloads are pulled, this shouldn't affect anyone much. Imagine going to a store and demanding a new copy of your game because you lost the game CD you bought there last year and being angry they won't service you. Infinite downloads for DRM-Free stuff is a courtesy and honestly they aren't even always provided by some software shops.
I get your point, but it's unfair. What I'll say won't concern Itch because they certainly have no responsibilities in this situation. And Itch's cut is freely set by the developer I think, so Itch is not responsible here. But here's the thing. The ability of to make a backup is very nice. It protects against the store shutting down, which happened for more than a few stores. And it protects against game updates that make old-version not accessible anymore. I'm a huge fan of backups and I did backup some of my games.
But we can not backup all our games. A modern game take around 50 to 100GB. Given that on modern computers, hards drives are around a few terabytes, a gamer could backup between 20 and 50 games on one hard drive. We could instead store backups on BD. They are much cheaper but keep in mind that modern games have regular updates. Updating the backups on BD to keep it up-to-date is not a simple and easy task. It takes a lot of time, effort and money. We need to take into account that physical storage's life span is not infinite. We need to make several copies to prevent fires, drawings, robberies, ... making some inaccessible. We could also store backups on cloud storage. But it's expensive and we would still have to update the backups every time a game is updated.
When games where distributed by physical copies, patches were rare and small. But today's updates are frequent and big. How much time and money would require maintaining all your backups up to date? Maintaining backups for more than 50 or 100 games would be quite big, both in terms of money and time. With sales and bundles, our collections grow very rapidly beyond that limit. What would you do when you would reach your limit of 50 or 70 games? You would be forced to stop playing new games until your limit increases.
The deal we make with a digital stores is that a cut of the price covers infrastructure cost. Digital stores act as cloud storage systems. I know that I can safely delete a game to make some space for another one because I will be able to download it again. They even save my saves in the cloud! That's a good model for us as long as they indeed let us download games again. And it's a good model for them. Storage is much cheaper for them because they can mutualize storage costs between customers. By taking care of storage for us, and being paid for that, we can buy more games. It's a win-win situation.
Of course the deal I'm talking about is an implicit one. Legally, the terms of the license are more more restrictive than that. But implicit deals do matter. Even if nothing forces stores, developers and editors to completely remove a game from a store, common usage when delisting a game is to let owners the ability to play it. As probably many here, I own several delisted games that I still play. I bet that a store that would have a limit or deadline for downloads would close very quickly.
What Night School is doing is awful. Dismissing the awfulness of their action by saying we have to do backups is unfair. The industry standard is to let owners play. I'm even sure that stores are OK with it. When you release a game on a store, when you take money from people, you have the moral responsibility to the people who bough this game. I know it's not a legal one, it's a moral one. Because it can be legal but unfair. This is the case here.
To Night School Studio: I had nothing against you. But such a bad move against your customers is really a huge betrayal. It shows that you have no respect for the people who supported you. Because taking the game on Itch is also a way to give you more money as Itch takes a lesser cut. Taking the game from our hands is unfair. How would you react if we took the money we gave to you back? Would you be happy? Another point. Do you really think I will pay again to play a game I already bought? You're forcing legal customers to rely on piracy, with all the risks it entails, to play a game they legally bought. Do I need to explain why it's bad?
If you can take the game back, then give the money back!
You do raise some very good points, and I totally agree with you about the publisher, this is a really bad move. I was only saying that itch isn't at fault here—especially since we're talking about itch of all stores, with its lax revenue model—as you said as well.
I am a little biased here, because huge games are not my thing usually, the vast majority of games I own/play are smaller indies that are rarely more than a few GB each. I just keep hundreds of them installed at any point and even more archived, as my internet speeds have always been bad anyway and I let downloads go when I'm doing something else, if I decide to play a game I don't already have on my disks, I'll be asleep before I can boot it up. Just my Steam Deck sits at more than 300 installed right now.
But I get that it's not always feasible to keep backups of 70GB or 150GB games, which do exist at this point. Although, if we want to be fair, I doubt anyone buys these at DRM-free stores like itch. Maybe a couple on GOG, but most of them only ever get released on Steam/Epic/Ubi/EA stores, which are all following the cloud storage / use-our-client-to-play model, so whatever I was saying doesn't apply to them. They are obliged to keep games online if bought there.
Anyway, it's a sensitive matter and everyone will have opinions on it of course, and that's ok. It's just, itch is really doing its best in this corporate world and I don't like seeing it being blamed for some greedy Netflix suits that decided to pull this game from it for some weird reason.
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Quoting: EhvisI only know of one instance of this, when Driver: San Francisco was delisted entirely.Quoting: EagleDeltaThere are publishers who have removed a game from Steam and also removed it to download. It's rare, but it does happen.
Which one? So far I've only seen removed depots and I haven't checked whether they could be extracted from older manifests.
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pleasereadthemanual Sep 10
Quoting: scaineThis game is the only reason I still keep my Xbox 360 around.Quoting: EhvisI only know of one instance of this, when Driver: San Francisco was delisted entirely.Quoting: EagleDeltaThere are publishers who have removed a game from Steam and also removed it to download. It's rare, but it does happen.
Which one? So far I've only seen removed depots and I haven't checked whether they could be extracted from older manifests.
Incidentally, Siege is the only reason I keep Windows around. It's always Ubisoft games, isn't it...
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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualYeah, Driver was particularly painful as it's absolutely superb. One of a few, select games I've played through more than once. I read a documentary on it recently that claimed that the average playthrough only gets to hear a tiny portion of the literally hundreds of hours of voice acting that went into the game. Sometimes I'd just ghost-hover over a target vehicle to hear the conversations!Quoting: scaineThis game is the only reason I still keep my Xbox 360 around.Quoting: EhvisI only know of one instance of this, when Driver: San Francisco was delisted entirely.Quoting: EagleDeltaThere are publishers who have removed a game from Steam and also removed it to download. It's rare, but it does happen.
Which one? So far I've only seen removed depots and I haven't checked whether they could be extracted from older manifests.
Incidentally, Siege is the only reason I keep Windows around. It's always Ubisoft games, isn't it...
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Quoting: scaineQuoting: EhvisI only know of one instance of this, when Driver: San Francisco was delisted entirely.Quoting: EagleDeltaThere are publishers who have removed a game from Steam and also removed it to download. It's rare, but it does happen.
Which one? So far I've only seen removed depots and I haven't checked whether they could be extracted from older manifests.
This one and the games EagleDelta mentioned all show up the same in SteamDB. Depots still exist, but give a download size of 0. However, SteamDB still lists all the files with sizes. Only one old manifest from 2014 left though. I do wonder what would happen if you manually downloaded it.
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heidi.wenger Sep 10
Quoting: MicromegasQuoting: IrisNebulaImagine going to a store and demanding a new copy of your game because you lost the game CD you bought there last year and being angry they won't service you.
If it was on a platform like Steam which would mean you'd be locked out of new installations, then yeah, that would have been a big deal.
I'm still waiting for a game CD delivered to me by Itch. No, I didn't bought a game CD that's the whole point. I had to make an account at Itch - which would be unnecessary if they would ship their games on a physical medium. And with this account I just demand nowadays that a pure digital copy of the game I bought is always there for me to download again. Otherwise modern gaming wouldn't be feasible anymore nowadays with tons of GBs of games you would have to archive yourself.
Either it is seen as industry standard that online gaming shops with user accounts keep copies of your games save for downloading or customers will probably soon stop buying games they don't plan to play immediately.
But the so called "backlog" of games many users have is a relevant source of income for the gaming industry.
LOL yep
no one was blaming itch.io or talked about CD's but still so many grasped it that way.
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Quoting: EhvisI believe that while you can technically download it, the underlying Ubi services won't work now. It still downloads uPlay, which wants to update to some new version, but when it does, it doesn't recognise the installer.Quoting: scaineQuoting: EhvisI only know of one instance of this, when Driver: San Francisco was delisted entirely.Quoting: EagleDeltaThere are publishers who have removed a game from Steam and also removed it to download. It's rare, but it does happen.
Which one? So far I've only seen removed depots and I haven't checked whether they could be extracted from older manifests.
This one and the games EagleDelta mentioned all show up the same in SteamDB. Depots still exist, but give a download size of 0. However, SteamDB still lists all the files with sizes. Only one old manifest from 2014 left though. I do wonder what would happen if you manually downloaded it.
Internet forums basically suggest illegally (or legally?) emulating the xbox360 version, or downloading a pirated copy that removes uPlay. I last played this back in 2018, and I honestly can't remember how I got it working again.
I feel another playthrough coming on!
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