Two Disney titles have been removed from GOG.com, Disney’s Aladdin and Disney’s The Lion King. The classic 16-bit retro platformers are no longer available on the DRM-free digital distribution outlet.

The heads-up came via a post over on the PC Gaming Wiki forums, where GOG gave gamers a brief heads up about the delisting on June 8th, 2019, where they wrote…

“We’d like to inform you that Disney The Lion King and Disney Aladdin are being delisted from our catalog on July 9th, 2PM UTC, due to the publisher’s request. Everyone who owned the games prior to delisting will still be able to access them through their GOG Library.”

If you attempt to visit the GOG store pages for Disney’s Aladdin or Disney’s The Lion King they will just redirect you back to the GOG main page.

These games used to be available on GOG.com for just $9.99, as evident with the archived store pages for both Aladdin and The Lion King.

Most gamers assumed that this meant that the games would also be removed from Steam. However, they have not been removed from Steam… yet.

You can still access the Steam pages for both games, but you can’t purchase them.

This means that the publisher simply did not want these games available on GOG.com or for purchase from Steam for whatever reason. It could have been over the non-DRM stance, or it could be that Disney is starting up its own video game digital distribution service sometime down the road and doesn’t want competition from smaller distribution outfits? However, if it were a case of Disney starting up its own service, then all of Disney’s games should have been removed from the GOG.com storefront and not just some of them.

A good example is Disney’s The Jungle Book, which is still available on GOG.com’s store right now for $9.99.

That’s not to mention there are still a ton of other Disney titles still available on GOG.com under the publisher tab.

So maybe it has to do with the new live-action movies being in theaters for The Lion King and Aladdin and they don’t want people comparing the better, 1990s versions to the newer releases?

Unfortunately there were no further details on the delistings.

(Thanks for the news tip ThyBonesConsumed)