Mickey Mouse Is Now Public Domain, So Of Course There’s An Edgy Horror Game
Infestation 88 Mickey key art
It’s 2024, and that means that Mickey Mouse is (kind of, but not really) in the public domain. As the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2024, the earliest animation featuring Mickey Mouse, Steamboat Willie, as well as a few other shorts released in the same year as it, entered the public domain. Naturally, that means somebody’s already made an edgy horror game about it.
Here’s the background: in the US, copyrighted works enter the public domain 95 years after their publication, or 70 years after the death of the author of those works. That used to be a lot longer, but Disney really wanted Mickey Mouse to not enter the public domain, so here we are. There’s only so much Disney’s legal team could do, though, so now Steamboat Willie and a few other animated shorts (including one that debuted Minnie) are in the public domain.
The Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain has a really good writeup on what all of this actually means, but the TL;DR is that you can, theoretically, create works based on Steamboat Willie and the earliest versions of Mickey and Minnie.
As we’ve seen in previous years with characters like Winnie the Pooh, which are in the public domain, one of society’s favorite things to do is take a beloved and well-known cartoon character that’s exclusively aimed at children and turn it into a creepy horror product. And that brings us to Infestation 88.
Nightmare Forge Games
Infestation 88 is a new game from Nightmare Forge Games, a studio that seemingly did not exist before this game was announced, made up of “industry veterans who have specialized in creating horror games since 2010.” Who are those veterans? It’s unclear. The studio’s website doesn’t say, and its Twitter account doesn’t follow any of its employees. We couldn’t find the company or any listed employees on LinkedIn either, so it truly is a mystery.
Here’s how the studio describes Infestation 88:
In the year 1988, what was thought to be an outbreak of vermin in various locations morphed into something far more sinister. Infestation 88 is an episodic, 1-4 player co-op survival horror game in which you and your friends are exterminators called in to treat mysterious infestations caused by twisted versions of classic characters and urban legends.
And yes, one of the “twisted versions of classic characters” is Mickey Mouse. The trailer for the game, as well as its key art shown above, makes that very clear, and a disclaimer in the trailer and on the game’s Steam page says that the game is “inspired by works that are now in the public domain.” Given the timing, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.
No release date has been given for Infestation 88 yet. The Steam page says it will be released in early access at some point in 2024, and will be in early access for 6-12 months.
Related: 10 Disney Worlds We’d Love To See In Kingdom Hearts 4
