Sega is the latest gaming company to announce it will be delisting a slew of classic titles on digital storefronts across PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC. No reason was given regarding the sudden removal of countless classics, but I have a sinking feeling it might be related to a future slate of remakes and plans to repackage and resell these games to us yet again.
Earlier this year, Sega announced on its official website that it will soon be rolling out plans to delist a number of its tried-and-true classics, including the likes of Streets of Rage 1, 2 & 3, Alex Kidd, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, and countless others. Many of these titles have been part of retro bundles and collections for years, with Sega also confirming those are set to be delisted too. While existing owners will be able to keep their digital copies and access them from their respective libraries, it feels like a weird move to make in the first place.
Why Are Video Game Companies Allergic To Preservation?
The blog post doesn’t give a reason for the widespread delisting, and Sega did confirm that games already available as part of services like Nintendo Switch Online will remain as such, but otherwise, this feels like a misguided way to tear away existing collections in order to try and sell us new ones.
You might claim that it’s fine for a company to remove products it has ownership of from sale, especially to overhaul them into an ultimately better state, but the idea of no longer having access to select versions of games for no good reason feels wrong.
It’s not entirely dissimilar to when Nintendo removed Super Mario 3D All-Stars from sale after a few short months, and now physical copies cost hundreds.
It’s a habit that has become commonplace for major companies in recent years. Following its launch of the Switch, Nintendo decided against revisiting the Virtual Console found on 3DS and Wii U because there were far more lucrative ways to make use of its legacy.
Why would you continue giving audiences access to digital releases of classic games they already own when there is an obvious opportunity to sell them again for additional pennies? Basic human decency would be at the top of my list, but corporations don’t know what that is.
We Need To Start Giving More Retro Games A Chance
Fewer and fewer consoles are backward compatible these days, while getting your hands on native hardware is prohibitively expensive for the majority of players. So we have little choice but to depend on digital releases of older games to experience them.
Ever since the PS2, we have seen Sega release comprehensive collections containing its myriad classics, and soon it will no longer be available. My money is on Sega planning to launch updated collections in a similar vein to Capcom’s recent fighting compilations, which aren’t just modern ports, but a love letter to each individual game ripe with different regional versions, art galleries, and the bells and whistles you’d expect from a retro game bundle in 2024.
I’ll welcome products like this, but not when the cost of its existence is wiping other versions of the games from history. Collections are representative of the place and time they were released in, and how Sega viewed this tenured arcade history and how that should be presented to players all these years later. Now so many of those games are being removed from sale, and it’s so hard to come to terms with why.
Sega doesn’t want to explain anything to us, so I can only assume the worst. Is it licensing? Plans for future ports? Wiping them from stores before a remake or remaster comes along? There is no way to know until something happens. But whatever it is, I’m not a fan.
