I’m gonna hold your hands while I tell you this: remember that Scarface game that came around in 2006, made a commercial success and even got a sequel planned but it was eventually canned due to corporate shenanigans?
Yeah, it might come back. We think…or hope. We don’t really know: it’s a whole, weird thing.
Like we said: Scarface: The World is Yours was launched by Radical Entertainment with publishing from Vivendi Games (by Sierra Entertainment) in 2006. Originally, it was a PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo Wii title that, at the time, had a moderate sales performance but, years later, became something of a cult classic among gamers.
The game’s initial premise followed basically the same plot as the homonymous movie’s ending, albeit with a twist (watch out for spoilers): unlike the 1983 flick that threw Al Pacino into Hollywood stardom, in the Scarface game, main character and Cuban drug lord Tony Montana survives the assassination attempt that was supposed to unalive him, but had all of his empire seized by the authorities, making you, the player, have to earn everything back.
A game where you’re a criminal who had everything, lost everything and has to rebuild and reconquer everything? Stop us if you’ve read this somewhere before…
Anyway…a sequel for the Scarface game was meant to be, but Vivendi merged with Activision in 2008 — a corporate maneuver that killed Sierra Entertainment in the process — while, in parallel, Radical Entertainment shrunk hard and, nowadays, is little more than a backup studio for other Activision titles without any original development of its own (which is too bad: we all enjoyed the Prototype series on PlayStation 3).
As for the Scarface game coming back, well, that’s a whole thing, really: a publisher that, as PC Gamer notes, nobody ever heard about, called “EC Digital”, listed “Scarface: The World Is Yours” as a re-release on both Epic Games Store and Steam, alongside several visual upgrades and even bundling up mods created by the community to improve the overall experience.
However, one day later (and a lot of uproar after), both listings were mysteriously pulled, with an apology from EC Digital, claiming:
Notice Regarding Scarface™: The World Is Yours (2006)
Hi everyone,
We want to sincerely thank all of you who noticed and showed interest in Scarface™: The World Is Yours (2006).
We’ve recently entered urgent discussions with multiple parties concerning the project’s status. After careful consideration, we believe that temporarily hiding the store page is the most appropriate step forward, and we’ve already begun coordinating with Valve to make that happen shortly.
The current page was initially intended as a placeholder while we worked through ongoing licensing and technical matters. Unfortunately, the unintended release of certain builds on other platforms caused unexpected complications and concerns. Because of that, we feel it’s necessary to pause and reevaluate.
We want to apologize to the community for the confusion and concern this situation may have caused. If things change and we’re able to bring the game back in the future, we’ll let you know right away.
This was entirely our responsibility. We also kindly ask that no one harass or share the personal information of anyone involved. Some of our partners working on completely separate projects have already been negatively impacted, and we deeply regret putting them in that position.
We accept full responsibility and are committed to doing better.
Thank you for your understanding.
EC Digital
Well, that’s not nice, is it? And as it turns out, it’s only the beginning: as the aforementioned PC Gamer mentions, the original developer for one of the mods of the Scarface game, SilentPatch, claimed at first they were never contacted by anyone at EC Digital (which, as mods go, they were under no obligation to but, you know, professional courtesy and all that…).
Then, SilentPatch came around and corrected the previous claim, stating there was, indeed, a contact, but no further details were shared and they were never made aware of the project getting a green light. In short, they were as surprised as, well, everyone, when they saw the listings.
A comeback for a Scarface game requires more than just a few permissions
Not only that, but let us consider this is a game about a movie, so there’s a lot more than “asking permission to Activision” to re-release it, as the original Scarface game had soundtracks, sound bits and almost every intellectual property possible on it, and the movie was made by Universal no less, so there’s a lot of copyright waters to navigate through. Basically, the only thing the Al Pacino movie game lacked was Al Pacino himself, and even that is a stretch, since the PS2 version of the main character looks very much like the East Harlem thespian.
And yet, the project was still listed, officially, and judging by their apology letter, EC Digital even recognized its existence, although now there is no further information of it to speak of.
Given our very own Mikhail’s acquired taste for mafioso-type games (as we all saw on his Mafia run), this would have been right around his ballpark. Or rather, not just his: Scarface: The World is Yours came in the same year as EA’s Godfather: The Game — another jewel that deserves a comeback of some kind if you ask me.
At any rate, we’re on the wait-and-see mode until further notice, but admittedly, we’re hoping this gets confirmed down the run.
