Last call for Forza Horizon 4: It's being removed from sale in 2 days, so get it while you can

pcgamer.com:

The excellent and not-very-old racing game Forza Horizon 4 will disappear from Steam in just two days, so if you want it, you'd best make your move now. Luckily, «now» is a good time, because it's currently 80% off the regular price, meaning you can snag it for just $12/£11/€14.

You might naturally wonder why Forza Horizon 4 is being pulled from sale, not just on Steam but all digital storefronts. It only came out in 2018, after all, it's very well regarded—we called it «worth enduring the pain of the Microsoft Store» in our 89% review, and that's not nothing—and it still has a healthy player base, with a peak concurrent player count of nearly 44,000 today on Steam alone. That doesn't sound like a game whose time has come.

The reason for the takedown is one we've seen before: expiring license agreements. Simplistically, developers sign deals to use real-world objects and music in their games, but those deals are often not perpetual, meaning that after a certain number of years the right to use that stuff disappears. That leaves developers and publishers with choices: Negotiate a new deal, remove the no-longer-allowed content, or say, «Hey, we had a good run,» and pull the plug.

In 2012, for instance, Rockstar removed GTA: Vice City from sale because of expiring music licenses, although it eventually came back. Earlier this year, 2K pulled the excellent Spec Ops: The Line for the same reason, and the odds of it coming back are basically zero. Alan Wake ended up in a weird situation where it has two different ending songs, depending on which version you own: David Bowie's Space Oddity was cut from the original release in September, but remains in Alan Wake Remastered.

Alan Wake was actually pulled from sale entirely in 2017 because of expiring music licenses, although it was brought back a little over a year later after Microsoft negotiated a new deal with the rightsholders. That back and forth, and the more recent split-down-the-middle, really illustrates what a mess