All Caltrain Content Being Removed On 27 February

I don’t want unbranded Versions

 

No one does. But I would rather not lose £40 worth of content if the next best option is unbranded or fictional branding.

 

I‘m Not Downloading at all then
I paid for the Licensed version on TSW 2020, there was Never any Information we could loose the License at all when we paid for it.

Want they remove all DB Trains when the License is over?

 

That's your problem. If you want branded versions, you have five games that you can play to use it, all of which are roughly interchangeable anyway.

Common sense dictates that anything of any medium that uses licensed content will be affected by the license expiring or changing.

 

Nothing already purchased will be affected by such. That's grandfathered. Any version of the product sold after the expiry must be changed. Which is why games including it tend to be pulled from sale when those deals expire, and then if later re-released on another platform, that material is removed if the deal was not renewed. Hence how I can play Death Stranding on PS4 from the disc with the Monster Energy drinks, or on PC with ingame branded drinks (My personal preference) or how my XBox 360 and GOG copies of Alan Wake have Space Oddity, but the version currently for sale does not. And how my Forza Horizon 3 and 4 still have all the cars and songs I paid for in them, but nobody can buy those games now.

 

And how I still have two different regions' versions of the Demolition Man DVD, one with Taco Bell and the other with Pizza Hut



(To be clear, my favourite is the PAL version for how the lack of any effort to lip synch the ADR just perfectly fits the absolute trash charm of the film as a whole)

 

This applies 99% of the time, but The Crew says hello. Ubisoft deleted the game from the library of those that bought it digital on every platform

 

The part the complicates it is that TSW6 versions of the CalTrain DLCs would count as new DLCs, even though they aren't in practise. In TS withdrawn DLC from the very start of the game can still be played on the current version because it's been one game the whole time.

In future, I'd hope DTG would negotiate licenses that allow DLC to be rereleased for new iterations of the game in their branded form, even if they're delisted for people who didn't own it before. Hindsight is a wonderful thing - I imagine the CalTrain DLC probably came before DTG were even thinking of TSW2 being a separate product.

Not quite. Those on Ubisoft Connect did have it disabled and greyed out, but it is still in player's libraries IIRC. Even if it wasn't disabled, you wouldn't be able to play it anyway. There is a mod that's creating a replacement server for the game, but that's still in development I think. I don't have a clue about the PlayStation and Xbox libraries, but on Steam it shouldn't have been removed because Valve don't allow licenses to be revoked. I don't own the game on any platform so I can't check myself, but there is a lot of misinformation about the game's delisting.

What happened to The Crew is still outrageous but thankfully uncommon. Either way, it's not really relevant to the CalTrain DLC.

 

Can confirm that on XBox it is still in my library.


I make a point of archiving the installs for dead games on a dedicated drive, for potentially assisting future reverse engineering efforts.

 

Installed yes, by library I meant the ability download it from the platform servers. I believe that if you were to remove that, even if you "purchased" it digitally, the option to download it from your account will not be present

The same happened with PT on PS4. Konami not only delisted it, they nuked it from everyone's library that had downloaded it. Already downloaded versions were safe, but the ability to re-download if removed was taken away from their libraries

 

Off at a slight tangent, but I hope if we do get a debranded version they will fix the issue with the F40 where you blow the PCS out when trying to set the cab up! Happened to me on the PS5 version earlier.

 

PT was a free demo, so even though it's very annoying that it happened to it, it isn't a The Crew situation. I'm pretty sure it's been archived for emulation anyway, so it's in a much better state than The Crew.

 

DTG once explained in a stream, that they don´t want to upset train companies or burn any bridges, even if the license allows it. So if anyone rings up and says: "we don´t want this or that", DTG will not do it, even if the license allows it.

 

Oh indeed, I figured that was probably the case...

 

Nope. When I turn off the XBox, unplug the drive, and turn it back on, it is still listed in my "Owned games" list, and can be downloaded right from my dashboard.

Much as I can also redownload other dead games on XBox like Hyperscape.

Dead live service games do not get removed from your libraries, they're still there. While the store page for them may have been taken down, I can still likewise install Battleborn, Nosgoth, and Ghost In The Shell: First Assault Online on Steam via my list of owned games, the executable just fails when it tries to start and cannot connect.

I believe the only exemption I have seen on platforms other than Playstation is when it specifically comes to games where there's a particular legal injunction, where it's, for example, made with a bunch of stolen assets ripped from another publisher's products, and a copyright action was taken, in which case the store reimburses you the purchase and can remove the game from your library.

If I had to guess on the PT outlier example, for a company based in Japan, it could be a feature of the country having some of the world's most extreme copyright laws, and thus potentially there's a certain responsibility to perform such complete content takedowns when the publisher demands it.

 

PT's delisting was (most likely) fully intentional, as the game it was a demo of, Silent Hills, was cancelled.

 

I mean, it's indisputable fact that it was intentional. The point being, even demos can and do remain in your library when the game they are attached to is delisted. It was specifically given a treatment that normally only ever applies to cases of outright theft where the lawyers demand it be scrubbed.