Afro Samurai 2 Pulled from Steam and PSN

Oh man

Oh man just when I was thinking this year might not need an "Apology of the Year" award.

Also, @austin_walker, this sentence is a bit of a mess.

Those storefronts are both have their fair share of bad games, and its not everyday that a publisher decides to delist a title, yank it from

Why not include XBO? It was taken off that too

Damn son

So they're refunding everyone even if they don't ask for it? If that's the case then that's an interesting choice. I guess they're trying to claw back some goodwill here.

had they just let it languish on the digital store shelf most people would have forgotten about it. There is currently no good reason offered as to why they would remove it as far as I can tell.

I liked the first game but something seemed fishy about this one. Glad I didn't jump the gun and buy it based on that.

Objective: Confront the guilt of putting out a terrible game.

@linkin10362:It was never actually released on Xbox One. It had been announced, but I doubt we'll see it now!

@uninvincible: Fixed.

@austin_walker: You've still got the wrong form of "it's", dawg. :P

I mean yeah take it down if it's bad, but refunding everyone who bought it? Well if Versus Evil's goal is to go out of business then by all means...

This is pretty cool and all but I don't really understand this as a business decision. Near as I can tell this is just a really bad game, not something broken or in need of immediate recall.

Aww does this mean it won't be a contender for any GOTY awards?

@uninvincible: Well I still think WB/iron galaxy gets that award for the mess that is Batman On the PC. Hard to top that hot mess.

It's a little insane that they are able to remove it from people's hard drives. What if people wanted to keep it because they thought it was hilarious? Consumers are not given the choice to keep a product they paid for?

@austin_walker: Oh huh, interesting. Swear it came out or maybe I just saw one of those placeholders they have for games not out yet on the XBL Marketplace

Played it PAX Prime this year. Was probably the worst demo i've played at the entire convention not surprised by this to be honest.

Oh snap!

@spicyrichter: That's the dystopian future of gaming! You don't actually own anything!

How did Afro Samurai 2 go live in this state at all though?

You never have even in the old disk based games EULA says that it is the property of the developer your just paying to use it.

I don't find it even a little ok to pull a game off someone's hard drive, no matter how shitty the game is.

Still the wrong "its" @austin_walker! (I'm sorry I can't help it. I'm a terrible person. Forgive meeee!)

@christaran: Agreed! They should give you the option to relinquish your license for the game if you choose; never choose for you. You can't just show up at a customer's house and steal back something they bought from you, even if you leave money in its place. Bad, bad move for customer relations there.

It's super weird that it not only got pulled from stores, but removed from the (digital) game shelves of people who bought it. That's some Ministry of Truth stuff right there.

I assume you have to actually opt-in to the refund process still, right?

I have no horse in the race at all, but I assume if you bought it, you would only get a refund if you actually wanted it.

Am I being old-fashioned about this or something? I know the game was pretty busted up and stuff, but to pay for it and just shelf it because you think it sucks is one thing - to pay for it and ask for your money back because you we sold an incorrect bill of goods is another, even if the grey area if what exactly constitutes the latter is in question.

Toren wasn't lackluster.

You take that back right now.

This Steve Escalante guy is a loose cannon! He doesn't play by anyone's rules!

Really this whole chain of business decisions is baffling. Why self-fund a licensed game sequel so many years after the license is relevant? Why release it in the un-fun, unpolished, and mean-spirited state it was in and expect there to be any customer goodwill for two more episodes? I recall from Quick Look that it was so relentlessly miserable and angsty, that it felt like a cry for help. After the customers have to tell you the quality of the game, why yank it off of people's hard drives and give ALL of your revenue back?

Hopefully this publisher will be in a healthier place in a few years and can answer all these questions with "We were doing A LOT of cocaine in 2015!"

This is kinda crazy on a whole nother level. They aren't even allowing the people who would want this game even for archival purposes who love afro samurai, no matter how bad the game is. I would have definitely preferred, academically speaking, to have given the option to those diehard fans whether or not they would want a refund rather than ripping the game from people's hard drive and throwing the player's money back at them.

Even though this was done with good intentions, and a publisher/developer has every right to remove their game from being purchased, forcibly removing it from hard drives with the promise of a refund feels like an escalation of what Konami did with PT and I really hope it's a trend publishers don't latch onto.

I think a better way of handling this would have been to have first pulled the game from the store and then create a generous window in which purchasers could voluntarily refund the game. Perhaps they could have even implemented a patch into the game to give a notice upon launch concerning said refund window. As to how to actually implement this, perhaps those who agreed to a refund would be marked in some way to have the game pulled from their systems after a certain date and compensated in PSN store credit. It would likely have been trickier to implement than their current method and there may have existed a fear that customers would find a way to abuse the refund, but a publisher deciding to forcibly take back a product and refund a customer is a very worrying action, even if the intentions behind it are well-meant.

That's kinda crazy that they took it off of machines that had already downloaded it.

I don't like the fact that they removed it from people who already had it. Yeah, it may have been a terrible game, but it's MY decision on whether I want to give it back and get a refund, not yours. I don't like the precedent that this sets... Imagine if Konami had pulled PT off of everyone's hard drive.

@dtat: No worries! This is what I get for writing this one on the run!

@wheels1993: I don't mind it at all when something is actually wrong with a story, as in this case! Even with proofreaders, mistake slip in!

I guess with those an argument could be made that you still own a disc a.k.a. "the game" that you could pop in and play at your behest but I gotcha.

Prime contenter for worst game of the year?

If you have a copy of this, quick; disconnect your hard drive! It might be worth something in 30 years.

All software is a licensing agreement with 99.9% of rights held by the provider of the license. How in 2015 people still don't understand this concept is baffling. You have never whole heartily purchased software in your life, unless you have purchased source code and licensing rights.

MS, Sony, Steam can cancel you online account with all your "purchases" whenever they see fit. Usually this is most common when your account is identified as attempting to modify the service, penetrate security, or work around predefined restrictions.

Modifying core game files like .exe's in Steam is an offense, with all licensing agreements rendered void. Now they don't enforce this rule diligently but it leaves the door open for them to close accounts when they see fit for the smallest infractions.

Instead of bitching, why not put your vote, and money where your mouth is.

I enjoyed the first game, especially the soundtrack but I played this at PAX and man it was not even close to being ready to ship. It was just incredibly janky to play.

Hey uh, did anybody else notice that the Afro Samurai quicklook isn't flagged as a quicklook video? I just realized I didn't even know this video existed, and I think the reason was it didn't show up in the quicklook section on my Roku or the website.

Very Not Happy about the game just vanishing. Not necessarily even for ownership reasons (though that is certainly shitty), but for preservation/academic/historical reasons.

Ask me anything about why I have like 500 DRM-free GOG games on a hard drive buried in my backyard.

That almost turned into a Pusha T lyric.

Did I read correctly that they removed the game from people's hard drives without their permission? That seems rather invasive. I don't think I like that.

Its not pulled from the dutch psn store yet...

@fatalbanana:I don't like how the "narrative" of Arkham Knight PC is that it was a disaster. It's performance was poor, but it was otherwise stable and playable as long as you were cool with 30fps. There have been far more disastrously broken PC games in recent memory, and I'm still surprised WB pulled it. Every other big publisher would have left it on sale for what were primarily complaints about framerate. The fact that WB pulled it seems to suggest they do actually care about the PC version more than most companies -- though obviously it would have been better for them to evaluate it pre-release and decide to delay it.

In any case what was actually wrong about that game has been blown way out of proportion; not helped by scummy press sites that have an MO of generating hits primarily for negative reporting (you can guess which ones...Giant Bomb not among them).

@penguindust: Definitely not. I think @austin_walker chose that wording for impact, but has reported an inaccuracy in doing so. Steam will not automatically uninstall games. However, deactivating it from your Steam account would effectively render it unplayable such that all you can do is uninstall it anyway (well that, or find a crack that removes the Steam authentication check).

Man, the thought of them being able to just remove games that I have downloaded is scary. This is why I still love buying physical games, I just wish more of these games were released on disc.

@bobafettjm: I'd agree with you, if I felt like I was getting whole game on disc. These days that seems rare too as big day 1 patches to even make it playabel are pretty typical and DLC requires download anyway....

@apothaeos: i heard jeff gerstmann was holding one of those not 24 hours ago.

Damn.

It would be good if they were just offering refunds. Not making it a choice is decidedly less good.