Another reminder that your digital library isn't forever: Oxenfree will be completely removed from Itch.io next month
Oxenfree, the gloomy adventure game from Night School Studio, will leave indie game storefront Itch.io on October 1, according to an email sent to users who own it this week. And nobody, including anyone who has the game in their library, will be able to download it after it's fully removed.
The game has already been delisted from the site for purchase, but you can still download it from your library if you manually search for it. In a few weeks, however, it'll be completely gone for everyone, whether you already paid for it or not. The email doesn't explain why it's being removed, but it's possible it has something to do with Netflix, who has owned the studio since 2021.
Both Oxenfree and its sequel are still available on Steam and don't seem to be going away anytime soon. Valve has historically been good about letting users download games they own indefinitely even if they're delisted from the store. Typically they're only barred from downloading if you used a third-party key that was revoked by the publisher or if the Steam download is just a launcher that connects to dead servers to install the full game, like many MMOs.
Oxenfree's removal from Itch.io certainly makes me wary of buying games over there if they can just be ripped away down the line, but it's important to remember that it's a platform made for small game developers who don't usually have to deal with corporate owners and exclusivity rights. You're not going to get unfinished builds of one-off fan games or personal projects on Steam at the rate that they crop up on Itch.io. So, to some degree, it's not all that surprising that its games can disappear. That said, Valve has earned a lot of trust by never letting this happen over the years despite the hoops you have to jump through to have a game published on it. I can see why people refuse to use anything else (though games do vanish from Steam for lots of other reasons).
But losing access to something you probably paid money for sucks regardless of what platform it's on. With massive companies like Microsoft slurping up every game developer known to man, I'm worried our digital libraries are only going to continue to crumble in all the places that aren't Steam. And then we'll just be relying on a pinky promise with Valve, which doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence either.
If you're one of the many people who bought Itch.io's Bundle for Racial Injustice and Equality in 2020, you may want to log into the site and download Oxenfree before it's gone forever.