Forza Horizon 4, the 2018 installment of the open-world racing game series that invites players to drive over 450 cars in a fictionalized version of Great Britain that features a dynamic weather system, will be delisted from digital platforms, including the Microsoft Store, Steam, and Xbox Game Pass, on December 15 due to licensing and agreements with partners, developer Playground Games has announced. DLC for Forza Horizon 4 is getting delisted from platforms starting today, leaving only the Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate versions of the game available for purchase until delisting, Playground Games noted.
Playground Games writes:
- “Starting today, June 25; Forza Horizon 4’s DLC will get delisted from platforms, meaning that only Forza Horizon 4 Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate versions will be available for purchase from this day until delisting happens.”
- “On December 15, Forza Horizon 4 will be delisted from stores and Xbox Game Pass. This means the game and its additional content will no longer be available for purchase.”
- “Players who already own the game and its content will be able to download and play it as normal, including its offline, online, and multiplayer features; physical copies of the game purchased after this date will also work and will be able to use online features.”
- “If you played Forza Horizon 4 through Xbox Game Pass and purchased DLC content for it, worry not: by having an active, full-paid (not discounted) Xbox Game Pass subscription on 6/25 you will be eligible to receive a game token if you have purchased any extra content for Forza Horizon 4 through your Xbox Message Center.”
Some promo trailers for the game:
Game description:
Dynamic seasons change everything at the world’s greatest automotive festival. Go it alone or team up with others to explore beautiful and historic Britain in a shared open world. Collect, modify and drive over 450 cars. Race, stunt, create and explore – choose your own path to become a Horizon Superstar.
Discussion (6 replies)
Join Discussion →Not my kind of game, so I have no dog in this fight, but man, it ought to be illegal to place a title on the market without having a perpetual license to all the content required to sell it indefinitely.
At least this game was on Steam, so acquiring a community demo shouldn't be an issue. I've seen that it is legal to distribute a game when there no legal way to buy the game. That's what happened when the community-made version of Halo 2, Project Cartographer, which turned the sh1tty original PC release of the game into a proper PC release. It comes with the full game, and you could just freely and legally grab it from their website. Now this was before Halo MCC came out, so I'm sure it's illegal now. But years ago it certainly wasn't. So I figure any delisted games are fair game to grab.
Previous Forza series games on PC were Microsoft Store only. Do you know how hard it is to get a community demo of a UWP game working? I certainly never could. I tried very hard with Forza Motorsport 7. That's a game I literally can NOT buy for PC even if I wanted to, because it is NOT sold for sale anywhere. But UWP games are just such a f*cking pain in the @ss. People complain about Denuvo and sh1t, but Microsoft's UWP nonsense has been some of the most effective DRM I've seen to date. But yeah, Forza Horizon 4 getting delisted is less of an issue, cuz it was available on Steam when it was sold.
Racing games, like fighting games, are games where one should use a community demo by principle, on account of their extreme DLC trains. And course, all this license-based delisting crap. It happens often with racing games, or games that use licensed music. I felt it was never much of an issue before, cuz on PC you had community demos, and on console well you also had community demos if you modded the system.
Well, at least on the Sony, Microsoft, Steam, and GOG platforms, you can always re-download a delisted game you've already purchased. Not sure how the other platforms roll. But for people who are always worried about losing their legal digital libraries, don't worry, the community library probably already has that game covered.
That's a common misconception, but it is not actually true. I agree that morally that should be the case, but it's not the law.
The only such exception that's actually a thing is that you are allowed to circumvent DRM if that is the only way to get your legally purchased copy of a software working.
Probably depends on the country.
Probably.
And it might also just be a grey zone.
What with piracy being a civil matter, if the legal entity that owns the rights to the title is unclear and/or unknown it may just be that there is no one left to file a lawsuit (or that the company that now owns the rights either doesn't know they own the rights or doesn't care)
Such was the case with the NOLF series a couple of years ago (I believe the attention that got - however - made the rights holder figure it out and and get interested though)
EDIT:
Welp. I guess that was 7 years ago. It felt a hell of a lot more recent than that. I was going to guess about two...
:oops:
...and it's currently on sale on Steam for like $11