That brings the number of games removed from Valve’s digital platform this year alone to 29 – and that is starting to feel a little excessive.
Three months after 14 Disney games were removed from Steam without warning, the axe has fallen again and a few more titles have now said goodbye to Gabe Newell’s storefront. As spotted by SteamDB, another 15 games tied to the Disney brand in one form or another were suddenly removed from the Steam store.
Here is the full list: Disney High School Musical 3: Senior Year Dance, Disney•Pixar Brave: The Video Game, Disney Bolt, Disney’s Treasure Planet: Battle of Procyon, Disney Alice in Wonderland, Disney’s Chicken Little, Disney Tangled, Disney G-Force, Disney Universe, Disney Princess: My Fairytale Adventure, Disney Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier, Star Wars: Rebellion, Star Wars: Dark Forces (Classic, 1995), Outlaws + A Handful of Missions (Classic, 1997).
We suspect licensing problems are behind this. The original Dark Forces and Outlaws, both of which later received Nightdive remasters, may be missed by the rare fans who never bothered to replace their CD versions with Steam copies, but in most cases we suspect that people who ever wanted those games probably already own them. The exception is Planet of the Apes. It is the only title on the list that does not display Disney as its publisher on the Steam page. It launched in 2018 and even received an update as recently as last June.
The game belongs to 20th Century Games, the publishing arm tied to Disney-owned 20th Century Fox. While most of the titles on this list look like the kind of games that could simply fade into obscurity in their Steam form, we would be surprised if Planet of the Apes, with its relatively recent release and recent patch, simply vanished as a purchasable product like this.
It is also worth remembering Disney’s $1.5 billion investment in Epic, and the claims that Epic is building a slate of Disney titles, including an extraction shooter. Maybe one outcome of that flourishing partnership is that Disney games become Epic Games Store exclusives?
