Forza Horizon 4 is my favourite racing game of all time, and a gloriously daft celebration of going fast set in a stunning, pastoral recreation of the UK. If you haven’t played it, you should buy it quick – because it’s being delisted from digital storefronts later this year, and its DLC disappears from sale today.
It’s a familiar story. Due to expiring licenses, Forza Horizon 4 will be removed from sale on December 15th, 2024.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that the game will remain playable after that date, including its “offline, online and multiplayer features”, according to the announcement explaining the delisting.
Forza Horizon 4’s multiplayer content cycles through events in a system called the “Festival Playlist”. The final series, Series 77, will begin today and ends on August 22nd. After that, the playlist screen will become inacecssible. Daily and weekly challenges will continue, however, so that players can earn Backstage Passes, with which players will be able to unlock cars previously exclusive to Festival Playlists.
I like Forza Horizon 4 more than Horizon 5, mostly because it’s set in a funland version of my actual home and because it lets me race trains and hovercraft through sheep farms and down hillsides. It’s also a game I’ve returned to several times, playing over from the beginning, and I suspect that’s something I’ll want to do again one day. It would be terrible if it became completely unplayable, as Ubisoft’s open world racing game The Crew did earlier this year.
Playground Games say that Forza Horizon 4 will receive various discounts between now and December, and it’s already 80% reduced over on Steam. A bargain.