Cliff Notes – Super sexist Leisure Suit Larry franchise is being delisted from Steam
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The original Leisure Suit Larry games (1-7 and Magna Cum Laude) will soon be removed from Steam, potentially linked to Codemasters’ ongoing troubles with IP rights.
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Despite their controversial content, the games are still available on platforms like GOG and Fanatical, raising questions about the reasons for their delisting.
- Codemasters, believed to own the original IP, is facing significant challenges, including job cuts and a halt in rally game production, which may impact the future of the franchise.
Super sexist Leisure Suit Larry franchise is being delisted from Steam
It’s no loss to gaming but it’s not right for any game to just disappear (Assemble Entertainment)
Almost all of the Leisure Suit Larry games are about to be removed from Steam and strangely it may have something to do with Codemasters’ troubles.
The point ‘n’ click graphic adventure genre has long since ceased to be a mainstream concern for major publishers. There’s still the occasional example from indie developers but the golden age of LucasArts titles like The Secret Of Monkey Island and Day Of The Tentacle is well in the past.
2022’s Return To Monkey Island is the only recent example of one of the classic franchises continuing into the modern day but surprisingly the only other one still going is Leisure Suit Larry, which had a new entry as recently as 2020.
For those that don’t know the series, they’re ‘sex comedies’ where you control a middle age pickup artist called Larry Laffer, as he lusts after various younger women. They’re not very sexually explicit but they are inherently sexist and painfully unfunny, although it’s not clear if that’s why they’ve been delisted.
A post on Steam entitled ‘Time for Larry to Retire (Just a Little Bit)’ states that ‘After decades of questionable pickup lines and unforgettable adventures, it’s finally time for Larry to hang up his leisure suit – at least the retro version of it!’
That means that Leisure Suit Larry 1 through 7 (as a running joke there was no 4) and Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude Uncut and Uncensored will ‘soon’ be leaving Steam, although if you’ve already bought them, you will be able to still play and redownload them.
The newer games Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry and Wet Dreams Dry Twice, by German studio CrazyBunch, are unaffected though, even though most people probably haven’t heard of those.
It’s very hard to say what’s going on here as the original games, or at least compilations of them, are still available at GOG and Fanatical, unless they’re going to suddenly disappear as well.
Although the games are embarrassing, with their initial success largely dependent on an audience of teenage boys, they’re not as outrageously objectionable as they sound, and no game should be erased from existence no matter what it’s like – although this is more likely to be a question of IP rights rather than censorship.
Unlikely as it seems, it may have something to do with the current problems at Codemasters. They announced this week that they will not be making any more rally games, and it’s feared that they will be badly hit by the hundreds of job cuts at owner EA.
Although they’ve done very little with it, Codemasters is believed to be the current owner of the Leisure Suit Larry IP. Or at least the original games.
They published the particularly awful Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust, by Team 17, in 2008 although they were so embarrassed to do so they did it under the Funsta label.
Original publisher Sierra On-Line went bust in 2008 and a number of different companies have made and published Leisure Suit Larry games since then, with the most recent titles, which are unaffected by the Steam purge, being published by indie company Assemble Entertainment.
Whatever the reason for what’s going on, things do not look good for Codemasters, with its main Twitter account having been taken down shortly after its WRC announcement.
The publisher generally relied on other game-specific accounts for its announcements but, sadly, it all points to an ignoble end for one of the UK’s longest lasting developers.
This is about as explicit as the original games got (Assemble Entertainment)
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