Disney has suddenly delisted over a dozen older games on Steam. Most of them are licensed movie and TV tie-ins to properties that have not exactly stood the test of time, though one title in particular stands out. Star Wars: Rebellion is a 4X real-time strategy game the scale of which has rarely been seen in video games set in the galaxy far, far away. Sadly, there's now no official way to play it.
These delistings all happened without warning, as they suddenly showed up as "retired" on SteamDB earlier today. (Thanks, Wario64.) The Steam store pages for the games are still live, but the purchase buttons are gone, replaced by a message warning that the relevant title is "is no longer available on the Steam store."
Here's the full list of affected games:
- Bolt
- Chicken Little
- Disney G-Force
- Disney-Pixar Brave: The Video Game
- Disney Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End
- Disney Princess: My Fairytale Adventure
- Disney's Treasure Planet: Battle of Procyon
- Disney Tangled
- Disney Universe
- High School Musical 3
- Outlaws + A Handful of Missions (Classic, 1997)
- Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier
- Star Wars Rebellion
- Star Wars Dark Forces (Classic, 1995)
In terms of games you might actually want to play today, Star Wars: Dark Forces and Outlaws – a pair of '90s LucasArts FPS titles – are probably the most notable names, though those delistings are a bit less egregious. Nightdive Studios has released excellent remasters of both titles in recent years, which are probably the ideal ways to play them, but I'd certainly prefer to have the original versions available, too.
You'll also see a load of people in the responses to the news lamenting the loss of G-Force and Chicken Little, which… Well, I can't quite tell if these have become meme games in social media circles I'm not a part of, or if there's genuine nostalgia for these things. I was a little too old for that era of Disney tie-in games, but I've got fond(ish) memories of deeply mediocre Jurassic Park and Tom and Jerry games for SNES. I get it.
For me, the game I'm saddest to see disappear is Star Wars: Rebellion. It reviewed pretty poorly in its day, but the pitch was endlessly compelling: you take control of either the Empire or Rebellion and wage war across the entire galactic map, in the style of a 4X game like Civilization. Characters from the movies and the expanded universe even show up as special units, offering a strategic sandbox where you can rewrite the events of the original trilogy.
Rebellion was held back in its day largely by its clunky interface, and that's the kind of issue that only becomes more debilitating with age. But regardless of its quality – or the quality of any of the games that have just been delisted – it's still a bummer to see it disappear from digital stores.
I've gotta ask why. Was there some licensing issue that required these games to be pulled down? Is there some tech support cost to keeping them up online? Was someone at Disney just annoyed by the prospect of accounting for a few dollars here and there on the balance sheet from the sale of High School Musical 3 games? You can, at least, get physical copies of most of these games dirt cheap on the secondhand market, but if you want to play them on a modern PC, your official option just disappeared.
Better get the best Star Wars games before they're gone.
