Alan Wake and Alan Wake Remastered will have different ending songs starting next week

GamesThird Person ShooterAlan WakeAlan Wake and Alan Wake Remastered will have different ending songs starting next weekWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES - 1973: Musician David Bowie performs onstage during his "Ziggy Stardust" era in 1973 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

In our latest reminder that licensed music is a headache that most videogames could do without, Remedy has announced that the David Bowie classic Space Oddity will be removed from Alan Wake next week.

Space Oddity plays over the Alan Wake credits roll, and it seems reasonably on-point: The tale of a man utterly alone, helpless, slowly floating toward his doom, but overcome with awe and at an odd sort of peace with the whole thing—and, in his final moments, thinking of his deep love for his wife. And hey, even if you don’t buy my ideas of thematic similarities, it’s just a great song.

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(Image credit: Remedy (Twitter))

🛠️ Alan Wake (2010) will receive an update on September 10th at 11am UTC. The update will be to all PC versions (Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG). This update removes the song Space Oddity from the game due to changes in licensing, and replaces it with a new original song by Petri Alanko, Strange Moons. Alan Wake Remastered (2021) will not be affected by the update.

This is far from a new thing in the world of videogames, and as outcomes go it’s about as good as it gets. Sometimes music just gets removed from games but in other cases, as withSpec Ops: The Lineearlier this year, expiring licenses cause games to be removed from sale completely. Alan Wake itself waspulled from storefrontsin 2017 because of expiring music music licenses, although it wasbrought back in 2018after Microsoft negotiated a new deal with the rightsholders.

(Image credit: Petri Alanko (Twitter))

Written from a point of view of an astronaut who does have quite a few problems. But even <em>that</em> is okay, as it is what it is. It wasn’t completely out of scratch (heh), as a section of the song was originally in a level in OG AW, but that level was cut out long before release.

Remedy didn’t say why Space Oddity is being pulled from the original Alan Wake but will remain in Alan Wake Remastered, but our assumption is that the remastered release is newer and thus the licensing deal will expire later, even though they’re essentially the same game. Seems silly to me, but such is the way of the world sometimes—especially when it comes to business deals.

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