Gabe Newell‘s digital platform has removed more than a dozen games, and we have no idea what the Mouse Empire’s plans are for these titles.
Disney removed 14 games from Steam. Even worse, the games were made unavailable without warning. We didn’t even get the customary opportunity to overpay for them before they disappeared forever (and then never play them). How many times have we seen someone announce that a game will be available for purchase after a certain amount of time and that it can be bought at a big discount before then? That scenario didn’t happen here.
The removed games are: Phineas and Ferb: New Adventures, Disney’s Hercules, Stunt Island, Afterlife, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, Cars: Radiator Springs Adventures, and Disney Fairies. Tinker Bell’s Adventure, Toy Story Mania!, Disney’s Winnie the Pooh, Lucidity, Disney’s Planes, Armed and Dangerous, Chicken Little: Ace in Action, and Finding Nemo.
Apart from our general stance that games should be preserved and accessible, we wouldn’t be upset by the disappearance of most of them. This is not a reflection on their quality; it’s simply that we haven’t heard much about most of them, and if we have, we’ve already forgotten them. There are, however, a few exceptions. Disney’s Hercules was a fundamental part of many of our late ’90s childhoods, whether we played it on PS1 or PC. (It was released on both platforms in 1997, if memory serves.)
We think the real loss here is Armed and Dangerous. Its third-person combat scenes were impressive, and it featured a weapon that could flip the entire map, knocking all enemies off. We don’t see such innovative games these days. Unless Disney plans to release a collection of classic games, it’s likely that they just don’t want to sell the older titles.
