Dance Inferno
Unconfirmed Member
y u bump dis n give me heart attack
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No One Lives Forever Trademark Filed By Night Dive Studios (System Shock 2 Steam)
- Thread starter inm8num2
- Start date
hemtae
Member
indigo-cyclops
Member
Love this outcome. Hope it happens!
MDSLKTR
Member
Please make it happen then avsp2 somehow.
Mmm I very much liked extraction point for Fear 1. Cut off a lot of fluff levels, added a chain gun and Holiday's death was the best part of the series.It's tradition. No matter how good Monolith games were, the expansion packs for them were always absymal
Extraction Point wasn't done in house, it was done by Timegate.
Baron von Loathsome
Member
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo
Well, it sounds like it's mainly WB's fault here whereas for the other two it's kind of a pain in the neck to bother rooting out.
Best hope at this point (short of the more straightforward copyrights expire path that most of us probably wouldn't live to see anyway) is either someone in WB seeing this story and going "whoa what the hell man?" and sorting stuff out, or a change of guard that's more open to this stuff. Kind of like how LucasArts was really lame about working with others on stuff but Disney seems a lot better about it.
EDIT: Also I do wonder if it helps in a way that WB's relatively new to the games scene? Activision will look for a profit wherever and have been alright about re-releasing their own older stuff and even reusing the Sierra label better than EA did Origin, and while Fox have been assholes with rights before they do seem willing to work things out at times and this is probably low enough to go "sure whatever" for. WB may just be too new and too fixated on establishing newer stuff that really paying attention to older stuff (or at least that which isn't cut and dry) is kind of a foreign concept to them.
CrAzY FiNgErS
Member
I guess I will try to find discs for the first 2 games on ebay and work out compatibility issues later.
Maybe they also want to avoid any liability in cases another party finds out after a potential rerelease they do have rights on the games, and decides to sue them (Night Dive and WB).
Well, I'll have to see were I put my physical copy of this.
jim-jam bongs
Member
Amazing
10/10 could not have said it better myself.
I have the first game on CD, haven't actually ever played it because it demands 16 bit compatibility which I can't seem to find away around.
Gambit 1138
Banned
This is a sad day
oipic
Member
Sad indictment of the modern state of corporate shenanigans with the big studios.
Shouldn't be shocked or surprised, I guess, but I can't see why Warner Bros didn't enter into a licensing deal with Night Dive as a relatively low-risk, low-investment dipping of the toes into the water with the NOLF brand. Worst case, it appears not a lot would be lost; best case, buzz is created, interest is revived, and they're then well positioned to consider a contemporary take on the series somewhere down the track.
I know that's over-simplifying things, but it feels like a WB has let a great opportunity pass here, with the bonus of having another mob look after all the heavy lifting.
Hang in there, Cate - one day, one day...
Shouldn't be shocked or surprised, I guess, but I can't see why Warner Bros didn't enter into a licensing deal with Night Dive as a relatively low-risk, low-investment dipping of the toes into the water with the NOLF brand. Worst case, it appears not a lot would be lost; best case, buzz is created, interest is revived, and they're then well positioned to consider a contemporary take on the series somewhere down the track.
I know that's over-simplifying things, but it feels like a WB has let a great opportunity pass here, with the bonus of having another mob look after all the heavy lifting.
Hang in there, Cate - one day, one day...
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Three pubs clinging to ownership of an IP that hasn't had an entry in 11 years (12 if you're only counting NOLF) and that they'll never use.
Two that might not actually have any right to it in the first place
charlequin
Banned
I mean, mostly because "Warner Brothers" isn't an actual thing. When a company is trying to negotiate with "Warner Brothers" for the rights to an old property, it means they're talking to someone in specific -- probably one person with a random "Vice President of X" title who is technically authorized to make a deal happen but who has no actual incentive to do so. A lot of the time, someone in that spot has huge incentives never to move a deal like this forward -- if they don't, no one else at the company will ever notice or care, while if they do, there's a chance that someone will see the deal they got and decide it wasn't good enough -- even if the deal they negotiated is literally just free money with no risk attached.
TheZink
Member
Good stuff.
jaundicejuice
Member
Probably calls for a thread title change and OP update. Sad fucking news indeed.
Sounds like they understand it just fine to me. They're just not interested in doing a lot of work for little payoff. I'd buy remasters of the NOLF games in a heartbeat but they're companies, not charities.
chrominance
Member
Ugh. Fuck you, Warner Brothers. Thank goodness I got both games off ebay a while ago, before anyone's hopes got raised.
chrominance
Member
Night Dive was prepared to do all the technical legwork and be the publisher of record, with all that entails (distribution, marketing). Warner just had to I'm the licensing deal. I mean, yes, companies are not charities, but it's not like we're asking for a multi-million-dollar remaster of a game that sold seven copies.
I had a feeling this was going to happen when it was said that there's news en route that people won't expect. It's definitely Fox that owns the games, though... and I suspect WB feels the same way. ND's CEO told me on Steam that talks with WB just suddenly stopped, which was followed by the opposition to the trademark filing; if I were a betting man I'd put my money on WB deliberately sabotaging ND's re-release efforts so it can chase the goose itself.
charlequin
Banned
What, exactly, makes you feel you can say this with certainty?
20th Century Fox is the listed as the copyright claimant in the Copyright.gov database, not Fox Interactive, which rules out Acti, and only the trademarks for the subtitles to the sequels went with Monolith to WB as opposed to the trademark pertaining to the IP proper, which, in addition to what I just said, rules out WB. I suppose it's theoretically possible that Fox sold off the games at some point, but you'd expect there to be a record of that somewhere -- it's a legally-binding business transaction, not selling something at a garage sale.
charlequin
Banned
Okay, let me rephrase that.
If it's as simple as you make it sound, Night Dive could just go talk to Fox, forget about WB entirely, and basically dare them to sue (since they'd need to actually dig up that ownership paperwork to even do so.)
That they don't do so suggests to me that it's not nearly that simple.
ND did talk to Fox, actually. WB came into the picture as Fox is under the impression it doesn't own the games, presumably because it no longer has any paperwork to prove so beyond the listing in the Copyright.gov database.
MickeyKnox
Member
If Fox still owns the IP the dream lives on
long lost sister.
DO IT.
Well, as I said in my previous post, Fox doesn't believe it does own the games (or rather, I presume, it can't prove beyond reasonable doubt that it does), and with no trademark registration the entire IP essentially exists in limbo -- it's practically abandonware.
Even if Fox provided paperwork proving it owned the games and even if ND successfully registered its trademark, there'd still be the matter of WB owning the A Spy in HARM's Way and Contract JACK subtitles. The IP really is in the biggest mess imaginable.
MickeyKnox
Member
Even MORE of a reason to spin it off as an Archer game, spiritual successor that circumvents the tradmark limbo while still cashing in on the brand synergy.
WHY WON'T YOU LET ME DREAM
An Archer game definitely needs to happen, I agree.
MickeyKnox
Member
In better news for me I found my NOLF2 cds and my key!!!! Now to see about getting it running,
charlequin
Banned
Yes, I read the story. My point is that making any kind of handwavey statement about who "obviously" actually owns the rights is foolish given the information we have available.
Please don't condescend to me if you're unwilling to quote me properly. I didn't say "obviously" (which would have been a little insulting considering just how tangled this web is), I said "definitely" and explained the underlying logic. I don't feel the recent news stands contrary to the admittedly dated evidence we have that Fox owns the games, but if you disagree, well, okay then. That's understandable.