Midway Xbox Arcade Titles Suspiciously Absent [Update]

Midway’s Xbox Live Arcade canon has today vanished from the service without announcement or fanfare. Games hit by the cull are the eternally glitched Smash TV, Defender, Gauntlet, Paperboy, Cyberball 2072, Joust, the aggravating Robotron 2084, Root Beer Tapper and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Eurogamer speculates that the removal may be attributed to the upcoming Block Party release of Microsoft’s Game Room, however, the previously reported ESRB ratings work around would preclude the pixellated fatalities of Sub Zero and company.

Midway’s 2009 financial troubles seem far more likely as the cause of the sudden delisting, with the late purchase and rebranding of the studio by Warner Brothers perhaps causing potential licensing issues with Microsoft’s digital distribution service. Confusingly, titles hosted on the PlayStation Network are at current, still available.

Neither Microsoft or the now defunct Midway have commented over official channels as to the fate of the arcade hits. At current, consumers baying for isometric paper launching or bar tending action are unfortunately out of luck, but those who already downloaded the retro classics should be able to grab the titles again by browsing through their download history.

[Update] Major Nelson tweeted “Some XBLA titles are no longer available for purchase from Xbox LIVE Arcade due to publisher evolving rights and permissions…” presumably in vague response to a burgeoning RSS feed of question marks and Microsoft directed expletives.