Open Letter to SEGA: Please Don't Delist Sonic Generations From Steam

Well, Sonic Generations is finally being remastered for modern platforms, with completely new Shadow content to boot. While surely exciting for most Sonic fans, this release comes with a massive potential downside for hardcore Sonic community: the loss of the original Sonic Generations PC port, and the hundreds of mods the community has made for it over the past decade. While not a guarantee, it’s not uncommon for companies to delist older, cheaper versions of a game they’ve made a remaster of. So, before it’s too late, I thought I’d write this open letter to SEGA with a simple request: please don’t delist Sonic Generations’ original port from Steam!

The Sonic community has invested a lot of time and energy into Sonic Generations mods. From patches that help the game run better, to new characters and Sonic skins, to physics mods, to entirely new levels, the sheer volume of the game’s mods are extensive. There's even a mod that utilizes a Mario 64 ROM (that you have to source yourself) to insert Mario into Sonic Generations, complete with that game's physics. Generations has long been popular with the modding community, and some of my favorite Sonic mods in any given year have been for this game.

Sonic Unleashed, a game otherwise unavailable on modern hardware outside of hardware taxing emulation and Xbox backwards compatibility, has had all of its stages brought to Sonic Generations via Unleashed Project, filling what is currently a gaping hole in Sonic game availability. Modders have expanded on Generations’ original concept with loads of new remade levels like Sonic Heroes’ Grand Metropolis, Sonic Rush's Water Palace, Sonic 2’s Mystic Cave, and a whole Sonic 2006 level pack that legitimately plays much better than the actual game. There’s even some really solid original levels like Shivery Mountainside, an awesome mod I reviewed a few years ago. Heck, modders even let me finally play as Scourge, something I’ve been wanting to do in a Sonic game for a decade now.

Key to Sonic Generations’ popularity with modders has been its accessibility. Being able to download and run Sonic Generations off the Steam store has been invaluable, and has helped keep Generations relevant even as the consoles it was also made for fell into disuse and those versions became less accessible. For this to continue, this can’t change.

Delisting Sonic Generations in favor of Sonic X Shadow Generations has the potential to render more than a decades worth of mods completely inaccessible to newer members of the community. Even if it’s possible to update these mods to work with the new game, most of these mods are no longer being updated and will likely be left behind. Worse, if Sonic X Shadow Generations doesn’t appeal to modders like the original game did, it would also make future works inaccessible.

We’ve already seen this happen to some degree with retro Sonic’s PC modding scene. Sonic 3 AIR is a very popular fanmade version of Sonic 3 that utilized the Steam port of Sonic 3. Ever since that’s been delisted, fans have been forced to source their own ROM for Sonic 3 in order to enjoy AIR and it’s ever-increasing assortment of mods. Despite being a newer and more readily accessible release, Sonic Origins has failed to attract the same level of attention from modders. Thankfully, Sonic 3 ROMs are quite easy to obtain, so Sonic 3 AIR mods are still thriving. Sonic Generations, being a more advanced game, won't be that easy for new fans to obtain for these mods.

I understand the downsides of leaving a $20 version of your big Sonic game up, but removing it would be a massive blow to the Sonic franchise’s biggest supporters. I would hope that whoever makes these decisions at SEGA is confident enough in the value Sonic X Shadow Generation’s new content to simply leave the old game up, but if this is somehow unacceptable I ask that you find some other way to keep this version accessible. Raise the price if you need to! Or include it for free with Sonic X Shadow Generations and let everyone who buys the game also receive the old version!

Just please, find some way to keep Sonic Generations around. I don’t think we’re asking for much.