The excellent and not-very-old racing game Forza Horizon 4 will disappear from Steam in just two days, so if you want it, you’d best make your move now. Luckily, “now” is a good time, because it’s currently 80% off the regular price, meaning you can snag it for just $12/£11/€14.
You might naturally wonder why Forza Horizon 4 is being pulled from sale, not just on Steam but all digital storefronts. It only came out in 2018, after all, it’s very well regarded—we called it “worth enduring the pain of the Microsoft Store” in our 89% review, and that’s not nothing—and it still has a healthy player base, with a peak concurrent player count of nearly 44,000 today on Steam alone. That doesn’t sound like a game whose time has come.
The reason for the takedown is one we’ve seen before: expiring license agreements. Simplistically, developers sign deals to use real-world objects and music in their games, but those deals are often not perpetual, meaning that after a certain number of years the right to use that stuff disappears. That leaves developers and publishers with choices: Negotiate a new deal, remove the no-longer-allowed content, or say, “Hey, we had a good run,” and pull the plug.
In 2012, for instance, Rockstar removed GTA: Vice City from sale because of expiring music licenses, although it eventually came back. Earlier this year, 2K pulled the excellent Spec Ops: The Line for the same reason, and the odds of it coming back are basically zero. Alan Wake ended up in a weird situation where it has two different ending songs, depending on which version you own: David Bowie’s Space Oddity was cut from the original release in September, but remains in Alan Wake Remastered.
Alan Wake was actually pulled from sale entirely in 2017 because of expiring music licenses, although it was brought back a little over a year later after Microsoft negotiated a new deal with the rightsholders. That back and forth, and the more recent split-down-the-middle, really illustrates what a mess licenses can become years after a game has had its moment in the sun.
Licensed music can be a real boon for games. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, for instance, wouldn’t be the game it is without Chiasm, Lacuna Coil, and Darling Violetta. But examples where it does more harm than good are plentiful: We lost two of the best racing sims ever in 2022 because of expiring licenses, and they’re just gone, beyond the reach of anyone who didn’t buy them prior to the takedown and doesn’t particularly want to resort to dodgy key resellers or less-than-legal means.
The one upside to the Forza Horizon 4 takedown is that, unlike Ubisoft’s Crew-shanking earlier this year, the game will remain available and playable for anyone who owns it. If you want to be part of that crew, now’s the time—Forza Horizon 4 disappears for good on December 15.
