Remedy has announced that a new Alan Wake update is scheduled to arrive next week, and it's set to remove one of the game's most iconic licensed songs, replacing it with an original composition.
In a message on X (formerly Twitter), Remedy reveals that David Bowie's famous song "Space Oddity" will be removed from the PC versions of the original Alan Wake on September 10th. That'll hold across the Steam, Epic, and GOG versions of the game.
"Space Oddity" will be replaced by "a new original song by Petri Alanko" by the name of "Strange Moons". As a reminder, Petri Alanko is a composer who's worked with Remedy on a number of projects, including Alan Wake, Control, and, of course, last year's horror sequel Alan Wake 2.
It's worth noting that this removal only applies to the original PC version of Alan Wake; it doesn't affect 2021's Alan Wake Remastered, which presumably still holds the rights to use the song for a while yet.
Of course, if you're playing the original Alan Wake on Xbox 360, then you'll still be able to hear "Space Oddity" there, too. After all, it's not like Remedy or Warner can physically remove the rights to the song from your Xbox 360 disc, right?
Video games regularly run into problems due to the expiry of music licensing agreements, including Alan Wake itself.
Back in 2017, it was announced that the digital and physical versions of the game would be pulled from stores around the world due to music rights issues. The game subsequently returned to stores in 2018.
Back in 2018, it was also revealed that Grand Theft Auto 4 would lose a number of its music tracks due to expiring license agreements. Many of those songs were subsequently restored in a later update, although that update brought some woes of its own.
Again, if you're playing Alan Wake Remastered, you won't need to worry about "Space Oddity"; it'll still play over the game's closing credits. However, if you're playing the original game on PC, you'll hear Alanko's composition instead.
