Thanks to an anonymous submission this morning, we have the sad news that FarSight Studios will be removing all Williams and Bally pinball tables from their digital pinball platform, The Pinball Arcade. The full announcement follows but basically: grab these tables before June 30th before they’re pulled out of every version of the game.
Our longstanding licenses for the Williams and Bally pinball trademarks will finally come to an end on June 30th, 2018. Therefore, after this date tables from these manufacturers will no longer be offered for sale within the Pinball Arcade. However, customers who purchased any of these tables prior to the deadline will continue to own them and have access to them within the Pinball Arcade, and we will continue to support them as we do the other tables in our collection. This change will affect all of our devices and platforms.
So if you’ve ever been interested in owning these great tables, please purchase them now, before they disappear!
FarSight will continue to release new tables for the Pinball Arcade. We are excited to announce that Season 8 will launch later this summer and will feature all of the recent Stern tables in Stern Pinball Arcade along with several new tables.
We’d like to sincerely thank all of our customers and fans over the past decade. Your amazing support of our game has helped build the Pinball Arcade into the greatest pinball simulation of all time. Pinball forever!
FarSight has been surprisingly forthcoming in the replies to this post and on Twitter. In one response they explained that part of the licensing deal prohibits them from putting the tables on sale so there can be no last-minute discount this time around. FarSight also sought to renew the license but according to another comment “The company that controls the WMS IP chose not to renew our agreement”.
The most revealing comment explains that this upcoming license expiration was the reason that The Pinball Arcade was released and removed from the Nintendo Switch eShop within a few hours. FarSight later confirmed that the game will be back on the Switch soon but that the release will happen after the Williams/Bally tables have been removed. In a subsequent post on Facebook, FarSight listed all 61 of the tables that will be removed after June 30th and it’s a depressing doozy:
Attack from Mars
Banzai Run
Black Knight
Black Knight 2000
Black Rose
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Cactus Canyon
Centaur
Cirqus Voltaire
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Cyclone
Diner
Doctor Who
Dr. Dude & HIs Excellent Ray
Earthshaker
Eight Ball Deluxe
Elvira and the Party Monsters
F-14 Tomcat
Fathom
Fireball
Firepower
Firepower II
Fish Tales
FunHouse
Gorgar
High Speed
Hurricane
Indianapolis 500
Jack Bot
Judge Dredd
Junk Yard
Medieval Madness
Monster Bash
No Fear: Dangerous Sports
No Good Gofers
Paragon
PIN•BOT
Red and Ted’s Road Show
Safe Cracker
Scared Stiff
Sorcerer
Space Shuttle
Spanish Eyes
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Swords Of Fury
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Taxi
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
The Addams Family
The Champion Pub
The Getaway: High Speed 2
The Machine: Bride of Pin•Bot
The Party Zone
Theatre of Magic
Twilight Zone
Whirlwind
White Water
WHO Dunnit
Wild Card
World Champion Soccer
Xenon