Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War’s modern port can’t be sold separately due to fighter jet licenses expiring, devs explain

The 20-year-old game will be distributed exclusively as a pre-order bonus for AC8.

Amidst dissatisfaction about the modern port of Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War being distributed exclusively as a pre-order bonus for Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, Bandai Namco Entertainment recently made a statement explaining the circumstances behind the decision.

During the final Ace Combat 8 Information Bureau livestream held on September 28, the developers at Project Aces explained that they are unable to sell Ace Combat Zero’s port as a standalone title due to relevant licensing agreements with jet manufacturers expiring.

The reason Ace Combat games are able to feature real-life fighter jets is because of licenses granted by their respective manufacturers. Sales of each title are conducted based on the scope of the licenses, which includes how and when they can be sold.

Though it has been some time since The Belkan War’s original 2006 release on the PlayStation 2, Bandai Namco Entertainment was granted permission from respective jet manufacturers to distribute the game as a pre-order bonus, as this fell within the scope of their contracts. However, the contracts do not cover the game being sold separately at a later date, hence its exclusion from online and physical stores.

The devs clarified that they’re “not doing this to be mean” and encouraged those eager to play The Belkan War port to pre-order Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. Fans have until before October 2 to pick up the digital edition for the pre-order bonuses (which includes The Belkan War and the F-14A playable jet), while only first-run physical editions of the game will include the pre-order codes.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is scheduled to release on October 2 for Windows (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X❘S.

Related: Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve dev asks players not to spoil the game and, oddly enough, extends the warning to the 20-year-old Ace Combat Zero

Ace Combat 8’s Season 1 to include playable Pac-Man and Galaga among other Namco classics

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Carlos "Zoto" Zotomayor
Carlos "Zoto" Zotomayor

Automaton West writer. Zoto has been playing video games for 30+ years now but has only recently come to grips with PC gaming. When he isn't playing video games, he watches romance anime and gets mad when his best girl never wins.

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  1. Are the du…mb… Can we buy fighter jets from in game or is it a fucking game and digital planes that we can’t fly in real fuc king life…

    • The fact that the license has expired might be true and therefore they are technically not lying, but they are clearly saying this to appease the masses. They absolutely do not need any license to sell ACZ as a standalone title, all they’d need to do is remove the splash screen when the game is booted and shows the licensing message.

      This is massively misunderstood all around, but there has never been a need for any license to sell a videogame that depicts a real vehicle, aircraft or weapon and the times companies tried to sue, they always failed, like AM general VS Activision in CoD over the depiction of military Humvees and Bell VS EA in Battlefield 3 over the UH-1Y.
      The reason some devs rename the assets to a fictional name, some might be just their artistic choice but some is to try and prevent lawsuits that are a hassle to deal with, but they would win any of these anyway.

      Of course, it might be a different issue if you start plastering company logos and names all over the place, but that is not a problem in AC as the company names and logos are never mentioned anytime during the game. Hence my mentioning of removing the splash screen when the game is booted.

      Anyway, my take is that, them being in Japan, laws regarding the depiction of private trademarked products might be different than those in most Western countries or most likely, probably don’t want to draw bad rep over a court case even though they would win.

      Note: I’m not a lawyer, but anyone can easily look history up and even consult real lawyers (even free ones online).

      • While no attempt at litigation has as of yet been successful, this doesn’t mean any in the future couldn’t be and it’s generally poor corporate practice to be reckless with potential litigation issues.

      • If this was true then racing games would of used Porsche cars from the start instead of using RUF as a work around. Even Forza Horizon 6 removed Bugatti because of its current licensing dispute. By that logic any company could just use any song or other form of media or product in their games. They get licensing to use copyrighted products and media in their games.

  2. What a terrible article, here let me do your job for you. Ace combat Zero was listed and advertised as a standalone program seperate game from AC8 on the stream page. After the 3 day early access started Bandai Namco edited the page to say AC0 is a dlc and not seperate. On consoles AC0 is a standalone game with achievements, etc. Bandai Namco lied to everyone to sell more preorders on PC. Modders have already managed to seperate the 2 games on PC, but this still means no achievements, etc.

    If you advertise something you can’t just change it after the fact and expect people to just smile and take it.