News came that Forza Horizon 4‘s DLC is becoming private from all in-game stores, with the entire game being pulled from sale entirely this December 15th. This is one of the most popular racing games— damn, most beloved games– over the past decade. And in a few months it will just disappear. Why? Because of licensing.
Originally released in 2018, Forza Horizon 4 brought the popular series to the bucolic setting of England’s Cotswolds and won over each with its dry stone walls and incongruous film pieces. It was a work of art and a great racing simulator. And if it has been since then Forza Horizon 5this time in mexico and just as great FH4 still has an active community serviced by ongoing in-game “Festival Playlist” events (incredibly close to the launch of Series 77, which will be the last).
But like say developer Playground Games in a statement released on June 25th, they won’t be able to sell the game soon. As in it’s being pulled from every online store before Christmas, with elements already gone today. The reason is “licenses and agreements with our partners”.
Due to licensing and agreements with our partners, Forza Horizon 4 will be retired from digital platforms (Microsoft Store and Steam) on December 15, 2024. This means that the game and its other content will no longer be available for purchase through online stores.
Honestly, it sounds tragic. We are in a disastrous time for wildlife conservationaccelerated by the move to all-digital consoles and enhanced by the publishing industry that is sickeningly hostile to outward attempts to preserve what they do not want. But that it can happen to a game so recent, beloved, and just the same good as FH4it really brings home what a ephemeral, transient gaming industry we’ve endured.
Playground’s statement didn’t go into any detail about what licensing issues the game is facing (we asked, of course), so we don’t know if it’s something as simple as the music used, or as complex as the litany of actual car models in the game. There are more than 750 accurately modeled cars from dozens of real car manufacturers, each of which will need to be individually licensed to appear in the game, and during development the end of the contracts they entered into probably seemed impossibly far away. to be afraid of. FH3 it only came out two years earlier in 2016, and it’s fair to say that the open-world Australian edition of the series – fantastic as it was – didn’t have quite the same impact and longevity. So seven years was probably more than enough.
Of course, these new events show that nothing short of eternity can ever be enough.
Playground and Microsoft are doing everything right, NowAs regards Forza Horizon 4. The game is currently 80 percent off on Steam, with similar discounts planned for the Xbox Store in mid-July. The companies are encouraging people to make sure they own full copies (rather than accessing them through Game Pass) and have promised that it will remain available for download and indeed will still be playable both offline and online, with multiplayer features preserved . Well, at least in the short term.
Playground also said that those who bought the DLC for FH4 when playing the Game Pass version soon – if they have an active subscription to full price (as in, not discounted) Game Pass right now – they will receive a “game token” valid until July 2026 to make sure you don’t need them to buy it again. It will be removed from Game Pass on December 15th.
But of course, that leaves a huge question: what to do with it Forza Horizon 5? What about last year’s? extraordinary Forza Motorsport? Will we say goodbye to them forever in 2028, 2030? (We asked again.)
It is worth noting that the release plans for Forza games have changed as games have become bigger and more involved. For the 2010s, there was an alternate new Horizon or Motorsport Each year. They were more “disposable” in a sense. But we’ve only had two more games since 2018. It has now been three years since it was new Horizon-the longest gap since the streak began in 2012 — and there’s no mention of it FH6 during all summer revelations. Loss Forza Horizon 4 this year is much more impressive as a result.
Surely the answer must be, do contingencies around licensing? Yes, I suppose it actually is far easier (though still extremely difficult) to accurately model 750 real cars than to imagine up to 750 completely original models that don’t contradict anything that already exists. But also, you know, we don’t really need 750 cars. 100 would be a lot! But at least the set of cars in the game that they are completely original shop brand models that represent each of the most enjoyable archetypes to keep in the game until the heat death of the universe. Notify players that everything else has a seven-year (or whatever) shelf life, and then you’ll have a playable – and more importantly – marketable game at the end of those contracts.
This would absolutely affect those who play these games for the realism, accurate depiction of the cars that offers a very important aspect of simulation. However, it would still allow the gears to have the same amount of time with the game as before, but also provide a means to sell the product later. Sure, it would lose a lot of its identity and it’s not a perfect solution. The perfect solution is contracts for an indefinite period. But maybe it’s better than never selling the game again?
And of course it is not aimed exclusively at Forza. This is a common sense approach that we desperately need every studio to implement when building games around licensed properties. It is miserable that we are losing so much art in this corporate well and it is impossibly short-sighted to enter such a situation today. (Not to mention that these studios are totally screwed by the licensors for a game like this Forza is the most unusual advertisement for a car manufacturer.)
Licensing makes sense to make a game look or sound flashy, absolutely. But unless open-ended contracts become the norm, unforeseen events must be built from the ground up.
And hell, there isn’t a movie you can’t watch right now because the main character drove an Audi. (Indeed, Audi probably paid an enormous amount of money to have their car appear in the movie.) There is no book that is unpublishable because the main character drank Coke. We can’t let games keep disappearing because of these short-term trades.
.