Less than six years after its debut, the excellent tactical puzzler John Wick Hex is being removed from sale. Publisher Big Fan Games says owners will continue to have access to it, but “new purchases of John Wick Hex will not be possible, regardless of platform or storefront.”
A reason for the forthcoming takedown, announced on Steam, wasn’t provided but the assumption, probably safe, is that expiring license rights are the culprit. It’s an unfortunately common problem for videogames that tie themselves to other media: Sometimes the effect is minimal—a few tunes from the soundtrack go missing, for example—and sometimes, as is the case here, games are just straight-up disappeared.
John Wick Hex originally launched as an Epic Games Store exclusive in October 2019, before making its way to Steam on December 4, 2020. It didn’t put up huge player numbers there, no doubt at least in part because of that prior time on Epic, but we liked it quite a bit despite its unexpected departures from the source material, including a cel-shared art style and the focus on tactics over action.
“What could easily have been a generic real-time action game works wonderfully in this form—converting the pace of the movie action into a very elegant illusion of it,” reviewer Robert Zak wrote. “It works admirably despite the somewhat sparse presentation, and feels like an idea that the developer could evolve into something really special in the future—with or without the John Wick license.”
The irony amidst all of this is that the takedown notification comes less than a week after Mike Bithell, founder of John Wick Hex developer Bithell Games, praised the way licensed videogames have improved over the past 20 years, saying intellectual property owners are more demanding of quality videogame tie-ins because “the people who played licensed games are now bosses in the companies that are licensing IP.”
“It definitely feels like we’re not a lunchbox tie in anymore,” Bithell said. “We’re not just, ‘I’ll put something on a shelf so the gran can buy it for the kid who likes the movie.’ I think IP owners see this as a way of expanding and exploring the worlds that they create.”
Licensed videogames may no longer be the nigh-inevitable box of crapola they seemed to be way back when, it’s true, although I’d attribute that more to the fact that videogames are far more mainstream now than they were in those days, and embarrassing shovelware tie-ins are no longer ‘good enough.’ But IP protectionism seems stronger than ever, and “expanding and exploring” those worlds takes a pretty obvious back seat to maximal dollar-squeeze—not terribly surprising, no, but it still sucks.
John Wick Hex will be removed from sale on July 17, according to the announcement, which doesn’t give you much time to add it to your library if you want it. If you do, it remains at full price on Steam and Epic, but as noted by the ever-resourceful Wario64, you can pick up a Steam key for just $4 on the Humble Store—that’s 80% off the regular price.
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