Coming-of-age video game Mixtape is packed with licensed music from artists like Devo and The Smashing Pumpkins, but publisher Annapurna Interactive and developer Beethoven and Dinosaur have told fans not to worry about the game potentially being delisted down the road.
Creative director Johnny Galvatron kept concerns about the game’s future from spinning out of control during a recent interview with Kotaku. Despite featuring a full playlist of tracks from recognizable groups throughout its foot-tapping story, he said that the team paid extra to maintain licenses for each track in perpetuity.
Annapurna followed up the interview with its own statement in an X/Twitter post. It said, “We heard some people say MIXTAPE would be delisted due to music licenses expiring. That was a lie.”
We heard some people say MIXTAPE would be delisted due to music licenses expiring.
That was a lie.
Have a great weekend, everyone. https://t.co/C3VesfWPpz
— Annapurna Interactive (@A_i) May 16, 2026
Fears that Mixtape could, at some point, be pulled from digital shelves aren’t exactly unfounded. Plenty of games have suffered similar fates due to expired licenses in the past, including Rock Band 4 late last year and the original Alan Wake in 2017. Even Grand Theft Auto 4 replaced a few tunes after some licenses expired in 2018.
It’s clear Beethoven and Dinosaur wanted to put in the effort to make sure its story and the music woven throughout it remained intact for years to come. One example of a “boundary test” idea that was floated but didn’t pan out involved asking Pink Floyd for a song, but the team’s supervisor cautioned that the classic rock band wasn’t likely to give them the track they were after. That said, when it came to getting the other tunes they wanted, Galvatron told Kotaku the team never ran into any real horror stories and got “pretty much everything [they] asked for.”
“There’s just so many points in the game where Stacy turns the screen and says ‘This is the Smashing Pumpkins, and it’s fucking sick,'” he added. “You send that to [Smashing Pumpkins frontman] Billy Corgan and he goes, ‘This is the Smashing Pumpkins and it’s fucking sick, yeah, they can do that. That’s fine.'”
Mixtape launched for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S May 7, 2026. IGN called it a “Masterpiece” in our 10/10 review.
“A musical delight from start to finish,” we said at launch last month, “Mixtape sets a new standard for coming-of-age stories in video games and does so with a masterful sense of style.”
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
