"New sales of Warhammer Quest will end shortly on Steam", a recent news post for the turn-based dungeon crawler tersely says. "Thanks for all your support for this game over the years." Released in 2015, Warhammer Quest is an adaptation of Games Workshop's tabletop game of the same name. A sort of Advanced Advanced Heroquest, it's a halfway step between board game and RPG that combines a gloomy, dangerous underworld with an only slightly less gloomy overworld where you recuperate in town and story beats play out.
Unfortunately, like so many licensed games, its lifespan is on a timer. Responding to disappointed comments from players on the Steam forum, the official Chilled Mouse account said, "I don't think it's appropriate (or probably even allowed under our agreement with them) to discuss the details of the license. But I can say that Games Workshop have been fantastic partners on this game for us, they have been very generous with the interpretation of the agreement and I really think you're being unfair on them. All good things come to an end eventually."
Chilled Mouse also clarified that Warhammer Quest 2 "is not tied to this announcement" and will remain on sale, though it hasn't said when sales will end, if it will be put on discount before then, or whether Warhammer Quest will be removed from GOG as well, and hasn't replied to requests for comment.
The delisting of Warhammer Quest follows the removal of Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf on October 12, and last year saw Warhammer 40,000: Regicide and Age of Sigmar: Champions both get delisted—the latter only three years after release. It's brutal out there for licensed games.
blue_boy_robot on October 22nd, 2023 at 02:44 UTC »
It's weird that game devs are signing license agreements which require them to kill their games after a set amount of time. That doesn't seem normal, does it?
Like, if I get the license to make a Warhammer movie, presumably I would not have to destroy all copies of the movie after the license runs out.