Adult Swim delists more games, casts doubt on developers re-acquiring rights

Defunct publisher Adult Swim games has published "sunset statements" on a number of its indie games' Steam pages, noting "Adult Swim is no longer able to continue as publisher for this game and the developer is not available to take over as publisher at this time."

As spotted by GamesIndustry.biz, the near-identical statements were posted to the pages for Super House of Dead Ninjas, Traverser, Mega Coin Squad, and Zenzizenzic on Tuesday, and in at least one case, the developer was not actually contacted for a potential rights transfer, with Bitmap Bureau LTD (which made Super House of Dead Ninjas under a different name, MegaDev) taking to X to note they would like to keep the game going.

The interest is still there for some Adult Swim-affiliated developers

"Well, we're still active (under a new name), and more than willing to keep Super House Of Dead Ninjas alive!" the post said. In a reply, the developer said, "We sold the IP to Adult Swim back in the day, but we're happy to buy it back if that's an option..." And further, "We did reach out a couple of times but didn't receive a reply. We did however hear about another potential lead but we've just been too busy to follow it up—guess we'd better get a move on!"

The news comes after a number of Adult Swim published games had their rights transferred back to their developers last May. Duck Game dev Landon Podbielski and Small Radios Big Televisions creator Owen Deery both revealed the games' rights and store pages were reverted to them that month following WB Games' retirement of Adult Swim Games.

It's unclear if there is a new policy afoot here or a case of missed connection with the creators of the recently affected games.