This much-loved game that just left Xbox Game Pass has also mysteriously disappeared from the Microsoft Store in some incomprehensible way.
The Xbox Game Pass is the delight of many owners of Microsoft consoles. This provides access to a large catalog of games for a monthly subscription. In this month of July, excellent news concerning the Microsoft service has just fallen: the return of the offer to 1 € for the first month of subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. This should encourage smaller budgets to discover Microsoft’s service for the first time. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to discover this title which has just left the Xbox Game Pass… and the Microsoft Store too!
A game left Xbox Game Pass and the Microsoft Store without warning
If you’re not familiar with Xbox Game Pass, be aware that Microsoft’s service catalog regularly welcomes new titles, but games also leave the service every month. On June 30, a certain Omori left the Xbox Game Pass which, so far, is pretty common. On the other hand, the game released in June 2022 on Xbox (in 2020 on PC) very surprisingly disappeared from the Microsoft Store at the same time, as noted by IdleSloth84, who shares his discovery on Twitter. Xbox support, contacted by a player, explains that the partnership between developer OMOCAT and Xbox has simply ended. The problem is thatOmori has also disappeared from the PlayStation Store in France…
Omori, a popular game among players… but there is a problem
What’s going on with Omori ? To try to understand it, we have to go back a little in the past, in 2014. At the time, OMOCAT, developer of the game (joined by several people since) but also an artist, had created a t-shirt posted on its shop that featured the term “shota”, which refers to sexual attraction to young boys. Enough to trigger a lively controversy on social networks, to which OMOCAT had been forced to react by explaining that this word had no sexual connotation according to her. Difficult to know if the disappearance ofOmori Xbox Game Pass is linked to this almost 10-year-old controversy, but it remains a hypothesis to consider given the particularly evasive response from Xbox support.
Beyond that, Omori is considered a very good psychological horror RPG by gamers and the press, as evidenced by its ratings on Metacritic. The title stood out for its sharp artistic direction, but above all for its subtle and touching treatment of anxiety and depression. To enjoy the game funded on Kickstarter, you must therefore either have a Nintendo Switch or buy the title on PC. For the time being, the independent studio OMOCAT has not reacted to the treatment given to Omori.