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Warner Bros. is now erasing games as it plans to delist Adult Swim-published titles (www.polygon.com)

submitted 3 months ago by Ninjazzon@infosec.pub to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start “retiring” games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim unclear.

The media conglomerate’s planned removal of those games echoes cuts from its film and television business; Warner Bros. Discovery infamously scrapped plans to release nearly complete movies Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, and removed multiple series from its streaming services. If Warner Bros. does go through with plans to delist Adult Swim’s games from Steam and digital console stores, 18 or more games could be affected.

News of the Warner Bros. plan to potentially pull Adult Swim’s games from Steam and the PlayStation Store was first reported by developer Owen Reedy, who released puzzle-adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions through the label in 2016. Reedy said on X Tuesday the game was being “retired” by Adult Swim Games’ owner. He responded to the company’s decision by making the Windows PC version of Small Radios Big Televisions available to download for free from his studio’s website.

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[-] OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 90 points 3 months ago

I honestly don't understand the math of not releasing movies and un-releasing games. People say tax purposes but I'd think streaming is essentially pure profit, hard to imagine not being able to make 20% of your money back or whatever credit you get for taxes.

[-] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 40 points 3 months ago

if you write it off as a tax write off you get to lie about "expected viewership" rather than actual viewership

[-] roguetrick@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You can't write off expected future profits. That would essentially make income taxes meaningless. You can use a depreciation schedule for movies that you've produced and spread your tax savings out if you want(and you can avoid doing that by cancelling the movie all together and claiming it on your taxes now as a deduction), but that only matters when you're actually making future money for the movie that you want to reduce your tax burden on. WB is losing a hell of a lot of money in the future to save money right now.

[-] wazzupdog@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago

You clearly have no idea what a tax write off is. If you get 50$ profit spend 25$ on your business and pocket 25$ you pay taxes on your pocketed 25$ not the companies expenditures. That is a tax write off. A "company" doesn't pay taxes.

[-] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 months ago

The second part of this comment doesn't make a lot of sense.

My understanding is that the tax system allows for the declaration of depreciation in assets as a business expense. This is fine for assets with transparent market valuations.

The part where this system could be abused is in willfully withholding the release of a movie, overvaluing the expected revenue, and then subsequently declaring the lack of revenue as a depreciation in assets which is then declared as a business expense to reduce the tax burden.

A clearer example of this, with very obvious fraud, might be:

I paint a picture, spending about an hour of my time and 30$ of paint and canvas.
I then organize a silent/shady auction for my painting, and secretly bid $1,000,000 for my own painting
Then I decide to not pay for it and at the same time I decide to retract the sale instead of opening it up.
On paper I have a $1,000,000 asset that has been depreciated by $1,000,000 which allows me to deduct $1,000,000 from my other taxes.

So obviously this example was fraudulous. It's possible that the expected revenue on the cases involving movies was estimated transparently and was fair, because of market forces.

Maybe something more scummy was at play?

Who knows.