David Bowie‘s ‘Space Oddity’ is going to be removed from the soundtrack of Alan Wake and replaced with a new original song by Petri Alanko, ‘Strange Moons’.
The official Alan Wake X (formerly Twitter) account has revealed that the iconic song by Daivd Bowie will be removed from the game’s Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG versions due to “changes in licensing.” This will only affect PC players, not those playing on console. The song plays over the game’s credits, closing off the experience.
This update will only affect the original 2010 iteration of Alan Wake and won’t change anything on the Alan Wake Remastered version which came out in 2021. The update is comign September 10. Song licensing has affected video games before, with the remake of Lollipop Chainsaw having to change many of the songs used in the original game.
Fans of the game have shared their thoughts under the announcement. “Awful. Video games should get the same treatment as film. All media within has to be preserved,” wrote Melee Games. “The video game industry is terrible with music licenses. I mean, you never see this happen with movies, where they come back and remove a song from a movie scene years later,” added another fan on X.
It is possible to stop Steam games from updating by selecting the ‘only update this game when I launch it’ option from the game’s library page. You can then reorder the update or pause it in the download manager.
You can currently stream the official Alan Wake 2 soundtrack if you’re a fan of the game’s original score.
In other news, Baldur’s Gate 3 just got a new update that adds new evil ending cutscenes, improves split screen co-op play, and adds some new features for honour mode.