In early 2024, Warner Brothers’ Adult Swim Games subsidiary announced that it would begin delisting games from digital storefronts. While many of these games are disappearing, one, Super House of Dead Ninjas, might yet be saved by its original development team.
A recent Steam news update for Super House of Dead Ninjas explains that the game will be deleted on July 15, 2024. While it’s not the most popular game in the world, it still has a decent fan base, many of whom expressed how gutted they are to hear the news on Reddit. User Super_Sayen067 is one of many saying something along the lines of, “Spent so many hours on this game, I love it dearly!” But it’s not all doom and gloom because the original development team seems to be on the case.
Super House of Dead Ninjas could be pulled from its coffin
Prominent games industry influencer Wario64 shared the news on Twitter, and the original development team jumped into the comments to explain what was going on in the background. The team has since moved on and created a new company, Bitmap Bureau, but it’s more than willing to save Super House of Dead Ninjas.
Interestingly, Bitmap Bureau is interested in buying back the IP for the game, which it sold to Adult Swim Games many years ago. However, the team had been having trouble getting in touch. As you can read in the Twitter thread, the studio has heard of one more potential way to contact the publisher before the game is delisted, so it’s going to get a move on to see what can be done.
It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean the game will be saved from delisting. It may just be temporarily delisted before Bitmap Bureau sorts out the IP acquisition. This means it will simply return to Steam later when all that business is settled.
Bitmap Bureau is a high-end UK-based company that specializes in producing 16-bit games for modern consoles that run on original hardware as well. You can purchase retro consoles and modern 16-bit games from the studio, but Super House of Dead Ninjas isn’t anywhere to be seen because, technically, the studio had nothing to do with it.
As companies consolidate their expenses by freeing up server space or simply closing subsidiaries, all sorts of titles, from The Crew to Super House of Dead Ninjas, are caught in the crossfire. If Bitmap Bureau can save the game from being delisted forever, it’ll mean future generations have a chance to experience it, potentially even via one of the company’s working retro cartridges.
