Claims that Mixtape will be delisted over music licenses are 'a lie,' says publisher

Two characters from Mixtape wince as a baseball breaks a light in a stadium. — (Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)

Ever since a study theorized that around 87 percent of videogames are not playable without finding a physical copy or nabbing a digital one via piracy or an archive, I stopped feigning shock when a game gets delisted. Games with licensed characters or music have an especially rough time staying on digital storefronts: Star Trek: Resurgence and 29 Disney games have been vaporized since the year began.

If you've been worried that Mixtape, the narrative adventure game which launched earlier this month and has become the target of every possible opinion, will suffer a similar fate due to all the licensed songs in its soundtrack—they thought of that. In an interview with Kotaku, the game's creative director Johnny Galvatron said developer Beethoven and Dinosaur paid extra "to keep Mixtape's licenses up in perpetuity."

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Granted, games get delisted for all sorts of reasons—this doesn't protect the game from all of those reasons forever—but at the very least, it shouldn't be down to Stan Bush's legal team refusing to renew rights for The Touch. It's an impressive feat considering that Mixtape has over two dozen licensed songs, some of which are big hits like Iggy Pop's "Candy" and DEVO's "That's Good."

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...