Most of Activision’s Marvel Titles No Longer Available for Digital Download, Dev Sheds Light on Troubled Deadpool Development

Following Capcom’s announcement of the Marvel vs. Capcom games disappearing in digital download form, Activision has followed suit, as the majority of their Marvel titles are no longer available for digital download.

This news did come as a bit of a surprise to many, with Activision seemingly only announcing this before it happened back on December 21st via The Amazing Spider-Man Facebook page:

Celebrate the final days of 2013 with one last chance to download Activision’s Marvel collection to your console. From now until the end of the year, save big on hits featuring Spider-Man, the X-Men, Deadpool, and more. 

These games – and their corresponding DLC – will no longer be available on the Xbox Games Store or the PlayStation Network after New Year’s Eve, so if you’ve been dragging your heels to snag a digital copy, now’s the time to pick up your controller and play at a great price. 

Last Chance Games

PSN

  • Deadpool

Xbox Live

  • Deadpool
  • Spider-Man: Edge of Time
  • Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
  • Spider-Man: Friend or Foe
  • Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
  • X-Men: Origins – Wolverine
  • X-Men: Origins – Wolverine Weapon X DLC
  • X-Men: Destiny
  • X-Men: The Official Game

Dan Amrich, Activision’s Community Manager, took to Twitter when addressing the lack of widespread communication about the de-listings:

Partly my fault, because I was away for holiday break and didn’t blog about it. 1oS is a one-man show. Capcom did a good job of letting people know their Marvel games were going away a bit earlier. Credit where it’s due.

I will endeavor to do better in the future.

For the coming year, Activision and Marvel are partnering on The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but Amrich said, “Beyond ASM2, nothing has been announced. I do not know what the future holds but will report whatever I learn.”

Also pertaining to the de-listings, Superannuation uncovered a forum posting from last year that appears to be from Wesley Griffith, Associate Environment Artist at High Moon Studios, talking about Deadpool:

Yup exactly. We had a couple of weeks where we crunched pretty aggressively on Deadpool. Having Activision cut and cut and CUT just took its toll on so many of us. For a studio to demand that we do mandatory overtime for a project and then keep cutting so much time and money from it was ridiculous. At about halfway into development we were told that we weren’t even aiming very high in terms of score.

Can you imagine working on a game where your higher ups say “yeah we’re shooting for a 64 or lower” and then have them give you mandatory overtime?

Btw I’m not shit talking the game. These are just facts. I hate that people find that they can’t talk about these sorts of things out of fear of being “blacklisted” or whatever. These kinds of business practices shouldn’t happen period. The reward for doing overtime, is knowing that you’re contributing to a damn good game, people are going to love and be inspired by what you do, good reviews and the FAIR possibility of bonuses.

Did you manage to grab Deadpool from the PlayStation Store before it disappeared? Let us know in the comments below.

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