Activision's Marvel titles pulled from digital stores

Several Marvel comics-based games published by Activision have been removed from Steam, Playstation Network and Xbox Live.

The titles being de-listed include Deadpool, which was recently featured in one of the daily deals during the Steam Holiday Sale. Other titles removed included a series of Spider-Man games, X-Men: Origins - Wolverine and X-Men: Destiny.

Anything previously purchased on Steam will still be available to download, but the storefront page for the affected titles now just shows a trailer and no option to buy.

To mark their removal, the games being were also marked down in price on console storefronts for the run up to New Year's Eve when they would become unavailable.

The games have been removed due to Activision's Marvel license expiring. In addition to the removal from digital storefronts, once retailers run out of stock on the affected games, they will not be replenished either. This is a particular surprise with the aforementioned Deadpool which was only released six months ago.

Despite this license expiring, Activision's rights to the video game adaptation of the Spider-Man film series reboot is still in place with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 expected to release in April 2014.

Capcom has also been affected by the same issue with its Marvel license expiring at the same time, resulting in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and 3 being pulled from Playstation Network and Xbox Live.