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NOLF 1 & 2 Community Revival

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GavinUK86 said:
Cool.

Is that legal?
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For someone to protest this, they would then have to have untangled the supposed roadblocks preventing these games from being sold, in which case they could then make them available for purchase.

Win Win.
 
kulapik said:
It's not that the right holders refuse to let the game be purchaseable. it's just that no one knows who has the rights for NOLF.
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and dont seem to be interested in trying to find out, seeing night dive studios offered help to discover who had the rights, and nobody wanted it.
 
kulapik said:
It's not that the right holders refuse to let the game be purchaseable. it's just that no one knows who has the rights for NOLF.

is abandonware legal? you could consider this abandonware.
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Sinatar said:
For someone to protest this, they would then have to have untangled the supposed roadblocks preventing these games from being sold, in which case they could then make them available for purchase.

Win Win.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Okay. Just wondering. The NOLF IP is in such a weird place.
 
As I have no disc drive in my PC for many years and no way to install off of my original CD's, I am happy to get patched versions of the games. Fuck Warner, fuck Activision, fuck 20th Century Fox, give us easy ways to purchase these gems.
 
Azure Dream said:
Who can bet someone's going to figure out they have the rights exclusively to shut this down?
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Hopefully nobody, or maybe it'll be like that Pokemon Uranium release. Goes up one day, the word gets out, then they pull it when they get notice from whoever. Which, from the copyright owner's POV would ensure the game is never downloaded again, anywhere, ever and purged from the internet for all of time.

Edit: Didn't mention this, but GET THESE, even the first holds up well. The humor's really good and Kate is a great protagonist.
 
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, OP! I was lucky enough to get NOLF2 on CD a few years back, but NOLF1 has been out of my reach.
 
Just replayed 2 recently, so this is great timing to give 1 another go.

Great games and they still hold up well today.
 
I have both the originals on disc :D
The first is a rerealse though.

good games form my teen years.
nice with full widescreen support here
 
kulapik said:
is abandonware legal? you could consider this abandonware.
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So... no, it's not legal then.

Well, if anything else we should be able to find out who owns some of the rights when the inevitable C&D comes out.
 
sprinkles said:
As I have no disc drive in my PC for many years and no way to install off of my original CD's, I am happy to get patched versions of the games. Fuck Warner, fuck Activision, fuck 20th Century Fox, give us easy ways to purchase these gems.
Click to expand...

Ha, was just reminded of this as my CD's are also in storage, but my PC lacks a disc drive. Hell my case doesn't even have a slot for one anymore.
 
Sinatar said:
For someone to protest this, they would then have to have untangled the supposed roadblocks preventing these games from being sold, in which case they could then make them available for purchase.

Win Win.
Click to expand...

Hah, that's pretty clever.

Would be a damn shame if some people don't get to experience this series, it's fantastic.
 
Sinatar said:
For someone to protest this, they would then have to have untangled the supposed roadblocks preventing these games from being sold, in which case they could then make them available for purchase.

Win Win.
Click to expand...


The page is up for at least a year (the first archive.org save is of from June 2016) so it doesn't work.

The rights are both with Activision (99%, at least for NOLF1) and Warner (100%) in some form, they know that much, and this complicates things. The problem is that the exact details are in contracts that are not digitized, and noone wants to search a warehouse full with nonsorted boxes with tens of thousands of pages worth of old paperworks - and especially not at two publishers. Not even when Nightdive wanted to buy the rights.
 
Sinatar said:
For someone to protest this, they would then have to have untangled the supposed roadblocks preventing these games from being sold, in which case they could then make them available for purchase.

Win Win.
Click to expand...

Actually, not really. From the article linked in the OP:

But then Night DiveÂ’s trademark application was made complicated when Warner Bros, despite refusing to claim ownership of the game, applied to extend their expired trademark of the name. Sigh. Night Dive reportedly tried to understand why, made repeated attempts to negotiate, but Warner showed no interest at all in even trying to make a deal, no matter how sweet Night Dive made it.

So where did this all leave things? In a place we called Stupid. Fox seemingly wanted money up front to even look through their filing cabinets (which they’d repay if they found they had no rights), so when Night Dive said no to that generous offer, Fox responded by saying (and I paraphrase) “You can bet your bum we’ll look in our filing cabinets for free if you start selling it.” Activision just shrugged. And Warner? Well, those treats sent Night Dive a “scary letter”, threatening to throw lawyers at them if they pursued re-releasing the game, despite the concurrent negotiations they were involved in. SIGH. Night Dive eventually managed to get the two parts of Warner to actually talk to each other, and sensibly ask themselves if they wanted to work out a licensing deal, which resulted in their saying… No.
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The rights are split across several companies apparently, but the individual companies could and probably will absolutely come after this community revival whether they plan to do anything with the IP or not.
 
Sinatar said:
For someone to protest this, they would then have to have untangled the supposed roadblocks preventing these games from being sold, in which case they could then make them available for purchase.

Win Win.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the actual motivation for them doing this.
 
I've already got physical copy, but if this end up untanglish the shitpit that is this games dormant ownership, more power to them!
 
kulapik said:
is abandonware legal? you could consider this abandonware.
Click to expand...

Here's what I've been told, and I think it makes sense:

There's no such thing as abandonware in legal terms.

What there is, though, is software whose legal copyright holders have left abandoned, meaning that development has ceased and, in most cases, it's not used commercially for profit. That doesn't mean that it suddenly becomes public domain and everyone can freely download and distribute it, though. It's still copyrighted material and sharing it around is still piracy, even if it's only technically piracy. That being said, the copyright of what people consider "abandonware" isn't enforced by those who own it, so no legal action is usually taken.

In this case, yes, it's a win-win situation. Nobody cares enough about the copyright to figure out who has it... but if they did, that would mean they could start selling the games again, or at least give the publishing rights to someone who cared about the games.
 
Two of the best games ever made. Basically a James Bond game with female protagonist done right. Its shocking they did not try to make the NOLF series bigger. Sold my copies few years back, sort of regret it but I'm so thankful I got to play them on PC.
 
Grath said:
The page is up for at least a year (the first archive.org save is of from June 2016) so it doesn't work.

The rights are both with Activision (99%, at least for NOLF1) and Warner (100%) in some form, they know that much, and this complicates things. The problem is that the exact details are in contracts that are not digitized, and noone wants to search a warehouse full with nonsorted boxes with tens of thousands of pages worth of old paperworks - and especially not at two publishers. Not even when Nightdive wanted to buy the rights.
Click to expand...
So... its like this?
200_s.gif
 
Plumpbiscuit said:
I'm not sure this is totally legal... don't copyrighted materials have a 15 (or 20) year protection on them unless renewal?
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Of course it's not legal, that's exactly why this site exists - to finally find current owners of the brand who have enough rights to shut down those downloads.
 
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