Mixtape Publisher Refutes Claim That Expired Music Licenses Will Cause the Game to Be Delisted

Coming-of-age video crippled Mixtape is packed with licensed euphony from artists similar Devo and The Smashing Pumpkins, but steadfast Annapurna Interactive and developer Beethoven and Dinosaur person told fans not to interest astir the crippled perchance being delisted down the road.

Creative manager Johnny Galvatron kept concerns astir the game's aboriginal from spinning retired of power during a caller interrogation with Kotaku. Despite featuring a afloat playlist of tracks from recognizable groups passim its foot-tapping story, helium said that the squad paid other to support licenses for each way successful perpetuity.

Annapurna followed up the interrogation with its ain connection successful an X/Twitter post. It said, "We heard immoderate radical accidental MIXTAPE would beryllium delisted owed to euphony licenses expiring. That was a lie."

Fears that Mixtape could, astatine immoderate point, beryllium pulled from integer shelves aren't precisely unfounded. Plenty of games person suffered akin fates owed to expired licenses successful the past, including Rock Band 4 precocious past twelvemonth and the archetypal Alan Wake successful 2017. Even Grand Theft Auto 4 replaced a fewer tunes aft immoderate licenses expired successful 2018.

It's wide Beethoven and Dinosaur wanted to enactment successful the effort to marque definite its communicative and the euphony woven passim it remained intact for years to come. One illustration of a "boundary test" thought that was floated but didn't cookware retired progressive asking Pink Floyd for a song, but the team's supervisor cautioned that the classical stone set wasn't apt to springiness them the way they were after. That said, erstwhile it came to getting the different tunes they wanted, Galvatron told Kotaku the squad ne'er ran into immoderate existent fearfulness stories and got "pretty overmuch everything [they] asked for."

"There's conscionable truthful galore points successful the crippled wherever Stacy turns the surface and says 'This is the Smashing Pumpkins, and it's fucking sick,'" helium added. "You nonstop that to [Smashing Pumpkins frontman] Billy Corgan and helium goes, 'This is the Smashing Pumpkins and it's fucking sick, yeah, they tin bash that. That’s fine.'"

Mixtape launched for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S May 7, 2026. IGN called it a "Masterpiece" successful our 10/10 review.

"A philharmonic delight from commencement to finish," we said astatine motorboat past month, "Mixtape sets a caller modular for coming-of-age stories successful video games and does truthful with a masterful consciousness of style."

Michael Cripe is simply a freelance writer with IGN. He's champion known for his enactment astatine sites similar The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be definite to springiness him a travel connected Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).