After the success of the recently released Sonic X Shadow Generations, which sold over a million copies on its release day despite its overwhelming censorship and revisionism of Sonic Generations, SEGA as a company wants to make it abundantly clear just how much they despise you, the consumer, and the entire concept of game preservation and availability.
Steam are getting fucked the hardest, losing a whopping 62 titles, including Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, NiGHTS into Dreams, Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic Spinball, Streets of Rage 1, 2, and 3, Eternal Champions, ToeJam & Earl, Phantasy Star II, Golden Axe, and Virtua Fighter 2, just to name a few.
Thankfully, Sonic Adventure DX will remain available.
But SEGA aren’t stopping there, they’re also yanking 12 titles from Microsoft’s Xbox storefront, including SEGA Bass Fighting, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Crazy Taxi, and the SEGA Mega Drive Classics Collection.
This same collection will also vanish from the Sony PlayStation Store and Nintendo Switch eShop. Looks like SEGA’s out to ruin everyone’s nostalgia this holiday season.
The SEGA Mega Drive Classics Collection is a compilation of classic games from SEGA’s iconic Mega Drive (Genesis) console, giving fans of retro gaming a serious hit of nostalgia. Released for platforms like PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, this collection bundles a ton of titles from the late ’80s and early ’90s.
It showcases some of SEGA’s most beloved franchises and offers a fantastic way to revisit these classics, whether you’re an old-school SEGA Genesis fan or younger audiences wanting to explore SEGA during their prime, back when games were actually good.
But of course, SEGA being SEGA, they’ve got some other fucked-up plans in mind. As of right now, they’re hell-bent on delisting countless classic titles from digital storefronts across all major platforms, meaning you won’t be able to buy them anymore. Yeah, they might bring some of these games back later, probably with a nice fat price tag.
Sure, your existing library won’t be wiped clean, and you can still access your purchased games. But let’s not kid ourselves; in this digital age, every so-called “purchase” is basically just a glorified rental license. So don’t be surprised when companies like SEGA screw you over years from now.
It’s understandable why SEGA would want to delist some of their games, especially after they recently pulled Sonic Generations from sale. This move comes on the heels of their censored revival of the game, which saw significant adjustments to in-game dialogue and pretty much butchered the whole character trope of Amy Rose, toning down her unreciprocated crush for Sonic into a declaration of friendship, a watered-down, politically correct version of Amy Rose that nobody asked for.
Some of the soon-to-be-axed classics like Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and Crazy Taxi are supposedly getting modern remakes or new installments. But don’t get your hopes up, Crazy Taxi, for example is reportedly being transformed into an open-world, live-service MMO-style game.
Yeah, because that’s exactly what everyone wanted from a simple, fast-paced arcade game. It’s baffling to see so many game companies continually butcher franchises we once adored, almost as if they haven’t the slightest clue what made them beloved in the first place.
Even if some of these classics are getting a modern facelift, that still doesn’t excuse SEGA’s baffling decision to delist a total of 62 games. SEGA’s legacy isn’t just significant; it’s a goldmine. But instead of focusing on that rich history, the company’s fallen into the same trap as other major Japanese developers, chasing Western ESG standards and bending over backwards to meet diversity and inclusivity quotas.
This obsession hasn’t exactly paid off, leading to major financial fuck-ups everywhere outside of the Sonic series.
Take Total War: Pharaoh from Creative Assembly, for example, a game that barely made a dent in the market. And then there’s HYENAS, a PvPvE live-service shooter that SEGA canned just months before its scheduled release. The game was set to include a drag queen character, likely the first for the entire gaming industry and supposedly had the largest development budget of any SEGA game.
But SEGA wisely decided to pull the plug. After the beta bombed, they figured it’d be better to cut their losses than to dump more money into a game that was destined to fail, especially when no one was going to fill those game servers.
Not long ago, SEGA took a massive financial hit, recording a staggering $41 million loss. In response, the company announced plans to restructure their European division and canned several game projects.
So, any hopes of a revamped Crazy Taxi or a continuation of Jet Set Radio, especially one in the form of some live-service MMO monstrosity or are produced amidst a timeframe where allegiance to political correctness and an unrelenting need to pander towards diversity and inclusivity initiatives are likely to fall flat on their face.
SEGA’s cash cow, Sonic, is now also drowning in modern-day ESG-friendly censorship, and now they’re removing over sixty of their iconic games from digital storefronts with zero explanation.
SEGA launched SEGA Forever in 2017 as a free-to-play service that aimed to bring their classic titles to mobile platforms under the guise of “game preservation.”
It was a collection of retro games from the SEGA Genesis, Saturn, and Dreamcast, all available on iOS and Android. The games were free with ads, or you could pay to remove them, which sounded good on paper but quickly became a pain in the ass.
Despite being a fun trip down memory lane, SEGA Forever had its fair share of problems. Technical glitches, limited features, and an endless stream of ads ruined the experience for a lot of players.
SEGA ultimately killed the service in September 2023, quietly delisting the games from app stores. So much for the whole “preserving gaming history” shtick, right? In the end, it was just another failed attempt at capitalizing on nostalgia.
As for these games being delisted? Maybe it’s licensing issues, maybe not, who knows. But what’s most likely happening is that SEGA is just setting the stage to repackage and bundle these games together in a “superior” edition, slapping a higher price tag on them to make a quick buck as they hemorrhage money entirely due to their failed signals of virtue. Either way, SEGA can go fuck themselves.
