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'tis the season: Activsion drops Family Guy, Ice Age and Walking Dead licences

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Update #1 (24/12/2014 @ 05:58 AWST): Survival Instinct is back on Steam.

-----ORIGINAL POST-----

All three associated games (Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse, Ice Age: Continental Drift - Arctic Games and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct) were just yanked from Steam. The move comes a little earlier than usual: this past January -- which is the month Acti's new FY begins -- it dropped the Marvel licence, while in January 2013, just three months after the release of 007 Legends, it gave up on the Bond licence as well as the vehicle manufacturer licences used in Blur.
 
And nothing of value was lost.

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Good. Activision are fucking awful at film licenses anyway, and they really shit these games out as cheaply as possible. Hopefully they lose the Spider-Man license in the future too, or at least start putting in some bloody effort.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
why not drop the damn crash bandicoot?

Acti owns Crash outright, doesn't it? The reason Acti voluntarily drops licences like The Walking Dead is that it feels it has more to gain by obtaining a partial refund as opposed to allowing sales to continue across the remaining life of the contract.
 
Last year. Marvel was this year. It's all in the OP!

When you speak of the Marvel license does that include Spider-Man, or are you talking about their other Marvel games like X-Men, Deadpool etc?

The funny thing is that most of these could be used to make great games - X-Men, Deadpool, Bond, The Walking Dead - but they just don't put any effort in. If they got a decent company to make a new superhero game and gave them the time and budget they needed it could be a smash hit, but instead they'd rather cash in on the name for a very short-term gain and make a cheap low-quality game. Imagine how popular a proper first person zombie survival game would be from a competent developer with a decent budget and the TWD license.
 

Markitron

Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
Judging from South Park: The Stick of Truth there's a good Family Guy game out there somewhere.

Although South Park has remained funny (despite the odd miss here and there), whereas FG hasn't been funny since 2005.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
When you speak of the Marvel license does that include Spider-Man, or are you talking about their other Marvel games like X-Men, Deadpool etc?

The latter. Spider-Man survived because of Acti's agreement with Sony to develop tie-ins to the TASM films.
 

Ridley327

Member
When you speak of the Marvel license does that include Spider-Man, or are you talking about their other Marvel games like X-Men, Deadpool etc?

The funny thing is that most of these could be used to make great games - X-Men, Deadpool, Bond, The Walking Dead - but they just don't put any effort in. If they got a decent company to make a new superhero game and gave them the time and budget they needed it could be a smash hit, but instead they'd rather cash in on the name for a very short-term gain and make a cheap low-quality game. Imagine how popular a proper first person zombie survival game would be from a competent developer with a decent budget and the TWD license.
Activision's Spider-Man license is separate from the Marvel license, though I anticipate they'll be dropping it soon with the uncertainty over the films right now. Not much reason to hold onto it where we're not even sure when the next one is coming out.
 
Now when will someone use the walking dead license to create an open world zombie game?
Ya seriously. Who's the dumbass that wouldn't greenlight that game? It is like they saw Day-Z and said a big fucking "NOPE! Don't want none of that money".

It would design itself from a gameplay pov for fucksakes.
 

Bricky

Member
Good. Activision should stop running studios into the ground by forcing them to make low-budget licensed games with no marketing.
 
Why didn't they have a "Last week; last chance" sale or something the week before they dropped, with the games at -80% or -90%. Might as well squeeze some final money out of them, no? Weird missed opportunity to make some cash.
 

Dryk

Member
Don't Activision own High Moon Studios the only studio to ever do the Transformers licence justice though?
Yeah but then they realised, put another studio on Transformers and moved High Moon to old-gen COD ports.
 
It's a little saddening that Activision has the funds to make quality games, but all we get is COD and other garbage. That Acti Walking Dead game was some next level stuff.

Say what you want about Ubi / EA, but they still make games I want to play.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Why didn't they have a "Last week; last chance" sale or something the week before they dropped, with the games at -80% or -90%. Might as well squeeze some final money out of them, no? Weird missed opportunity to make some cash.

They were 80% off ~a couple of weeks ago for a full week.
 
It's a little saddening that Activision has the funds to make quality games, but all we get is COD and other garbage. That Acti Walking Dead game was some next level stuff.

Say what you want about Ubi / EA, but they still make games I want to play.
Skylanders is garbage now? Geometry Wars?
 

18-Volt

Member
And this is how licensed gaming dies, people. To the gaming future free of cartoon and movie tie-in shovelware!
 

Nemesis_

Member
Family Guy was such a bizarre trip into history.

I forgot how shit licensed games were. Voice samples clearly taken from the television series. Recycled gags. Repetitious snippets. Incongruous quality between original audio and shit taken from the series itself.

uggh the worst.
 
Walking Dead: Survival Instinct was not bad, honestly. Frame isn't smooth, graphics isn't glorious, but I actually had fun playing the game. 6/10 for me.
 
I actually really wanted to play the Walking Dead game. :/
Oh, well.

Also, to anyone that wants to play a good 007 game, Quantum of Solace for the PS2 is a really fun title.
 
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