Telltale Games’ Minecraft: Story Mode has been relisted on the digital Xbox 360 store, but with a noticeable price hike that’s intended to deter new purchasers from buying the game ahead of its official delisting date of June 25.
It’s a complicated and unfortunate example of what can happen to digital games when their creators are no more, and something explained in detail on the Minecraft: Story Mode Facebook page. Story Mode, like many games from the now-defunct Telltale Games, is being removed from sale following the studio’s closure.
Games like Tales from the Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us were delisted last month, and Minecraft: Story Mode is due to follow suit in a couple of weeks. However, removing the game from sale on Xbox 360 had the unintended side effect of making it impossible for owners of the game to redownload individual episodes ahead of that full delisting deadline.
Because of how the legacy platform works, relisting the games for sale is the only way to let existing owners download Story Mode, so each episode is back on the storefront with a $100 pricetag meant to deter new purchases since, technically, the series is no longer up for sale.
“This is simply the only mechanism available to facilitate players being able to download their remaining episodes prior to servers shutting down,” explains the post. “Hopefully this will help existing Xbox 360 players get the downloadable episodes they are entitled to. When the game servers are switched off on June 25, the content will once again be removed from sale, upon which downloads will again become blocked.”