Viewing Company : Q-Games


PixelJunk Sidescroller expected to be delisted this week

PixelJunk Sidescroller expected to be delisted this week

Q-Games founder and legendary coder, Dylan Cuthbert, took to Twitter on September 22nd to announce that one of the studios’ PixelJunk games would most likely be delisted by the end of the week. The game in question is the digital exclusive PixelJunk SideScroller released on PlayStation 3 in 2011. It was the sixth entry in the loosely connected series. On Twitter, Cuthbert wrote:

“Due to a time limited music licensing agreement between Sony America and the licensing agents (that I wasn’t involved in and thought the license was in perpetuity tbh) there is a possibility that you will not be able to purchase PixelJunk SideScroller after this week.”

A Facebook post shortly after added a little more detail but not a lot of hope for the game sticking around.

“Due to a time limited music licensing agreement between Sony America and the licensing agents (that I wasn’t involved in and thought the license was in perpetuity) there is a possibility that you will not be able to purchase PixelJunk SideScroller after this week, yes that’s right, we may have to take it off the store by the end of September.

I think they are still negotiating to extend but I doubt it will happen at this point in its life cycle (music licensing people want money to extend and Sidescroller is past its sell by date – great game of course!).

If you haven’t got it you might want to pick it up for posterity; once it’s gone it will be gone for good.”

As suggested, you can still grab the game right now on PlayStation 3 in Europe, Japan, and North America. But don’t wait much longer as it’s expected to be gone in just a few more days. I’ll have a page added to the site for the game once it’s been taken down as well.

Thanks to everyone who pointed out the news!

The Tomorrow Children shuts down on November 1st, 2017

news-tomorrowchildren

Q-Games and Sony Interactive Entertainment announced in a bi-lingual post on the game’s Japanese site that online service for The Tomorrow Children will end November 1st, 2017. As the game requires these online services to function The Tomorrow Children will be unplayable and Extinct after this date. The statement is sincere, if a bit boilerplate and vague:

“We would like to thank you all for playing The Tomorrow Children up until now. The Tomorrow Children development and operations team would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for taking part and enjoying our title since the service began in September 2016. We want to apologise to all of our users who still continue to enjoy this title and ask for your understanding with the decision to end the service.

There is only a short amount of time remaining, however The Tomorrow Children development and operations team hope that you can all continue to enjoy our title until the end of service. And we would like to extend our thanks and best wishes to you all who continue to enjoy and play our game.”

No further explanation has been given but due to the game’s free-to-play nature and grueling design choices, the decision was most likely made due to low retention of active players. The post also contains a timeline of important dates leading to the end of service starting with the July 6th announcement:

    • July 6th, 2017 (Thu) – Service End Announcement (This Announcement)
    • July 6th, 2017 (Thu) – “Thank You Sale”, discounted prices on DLC and Freeman Dollars through September 28th.
    • September 28th, 2017 (Thu) – Removal of the Founders Pack, and Freeman Dollars from the PlayStation®Store, as well as end of new downloads for the title and special items. Share Play will not be able to play after this date.
    • November 1st, 2017 (Wed) 17pm (Japan Team) – End of Service

There’s a good chunk of time left before the game shuts down so if you were ever interested, give it a go. It’s quite a punishing grind to get started (as it should be, given the subject matter) but there really isn’t anything quite like it. If nothing else it’s got a visual style that should be seen first-hand before it’s gone.

The game page is up and relevant dates have been added to the calendar. At least one hands-on video will follow before the game is gone.