“It‘s kind of depressing”: WB Discovery pulls indie game for “business changes”
Enlarge / In Small Radios Big Televisions, you get the sense that workers trapped inside a series of siloed factories rely on ephemeral, easily distorted media to escape their realities. In the game, that is. (credit: Fire Face)
Warner Bros. Discovery, as part of its ongoing effort to stretch the definition of "entertainment company," recently told a solo indie developer it would be "retiring" his 2016 dreamlike puzzle adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions from the Steam and PlayStation stores. The developer, in response, has made it free to download for PC, giving us a rare chance to actually experience the thing that a giga-corp has determined to be not worth your time, before it is wiped from the archives.
In a thread on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday, Owen Deery, a self-described "small Canadian game developer" who works as Fire Face, provided a few details in replies. Deery doesn't control the sale price of the game but will still get royalties from the games while they're up. Otherwise, you could purchase the hard-synth soundtrack as a show of support, which in this author's opinion is very good music for working or feeling a combination of nostalgia and magnetic dissolution at the same time.
Gameplay trailer for Small Radios Big Televisions, from October 2016.
Ars reached out to Deery, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Adult Swim Games for comment and will update this post with new information.