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General discussion (archive)I NEED THESE GAMES!(29 posts)(29 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 11, 2011
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ArcturusXIV: Hexen/Heretic
Both are available on Steam along with Hexen II (and were offered under a huge discount with the Quake and Doom series). They work fine without Steam; I'm currently playing Hexen and Heretic within Doomsday, and Hexen II within Hammer of Thyrion.
Posted July 11, 2011
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lowyhong: -edit2- Also what kind of a name is Thief? Sounds really awful, and the graphics! It's 3D but sheesh those are some awful graphics...
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Titanium: Don't worry, Thi4f is soon to be unleashed onto the world. Just look at the name. HAH! The wit.
I hate you both ><

;)
Posted July 11, 2011
System Shock short story:

EA owns the trademark
An insurance company owns the copyright

You need both to release the games or to make a sequel. While getting EA on board here was a pain, I can only imagine the herculean task to getting two entities to reach an understanding (which they were unable to reach on their own for 10 years) and then getting them to give you the rights to publish the games.

I'll say it again: 10 years they were unable to reach an understanding. And you think releasing old games is easy? Never say never but hello, reality check!
Post edited July 11, 2011 by Aningan
Posted July 11, 2011
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Aningan: short story
long story
Posted July 11, 2011
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Aningan: System Shock short story:

EA owns the trademark
An insurance company owns the copyright
I may be mistaken, but I think Terri Brosius owns the rights to the voice work she did (Shodan & Delacroix, plus other misc) . That's at least a 3rd person to add to the mix. Additionally I think Ken Levine may also own some of the rights to the game so add a 4th person. Top it off with the music rights most likely being separate as well and... you see where this is going.

In other words that game is a total mess when it comes to the legality of it. Now EA could easily bring the System Shock "franchise" back to life and make SS3, but System Shock 1 & 2 are going to be a total mess.
Posted July 11, 2011
Why doesn't EA do what it does best and strongarm them into selling the rights to them or using legal tactics?
Posted July 11, 2011
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Fuzzyfireball: Because GOG needs everyone who owns the games to agree to sell them.
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lowyhong: Nah GOG just doesn't care about these games. I mean, Thief? System Shock? What are they? I've never even heard of them. With a name like System Shock, it must be a really awful game.

-edit- I just Googled for Shadowrun. Looks like a really crappy game. No 3D graficks, srsly? And are those...numbers and stats? Ugh...

-edit2- Also what kind of a name is Thief? Sounds really awful, and the graphics! It's 3D but sheesh those are some awful graphics...
Totally agree about Shadowrun. I mean, a cyberpunk RPG? Who the hell even wants that these days?
Posted July 11, 2011
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Wraith: Totally agree about Shadowrun. I mean, a cyberpunk RPG? Who the hell even wants that these days?
What's cyberpunk?
Posted July 11, 2011
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Wraith: Totally agree about Shadowrun. I mean, a cyberpunk RPG? Who the hell even wants that these days?
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lowyhong: What's cyberpunk?
I think it has something to do with cybersex and punk music. I'm not sure.
Posted July 11, 2011
Just getting legal clearance to sell some games can be a real mess. ..The D and D games being a good example. GOG was able to get clereance for Baldurs Gate and the other Interplay D and D games of that era, but the copyright for some of the older D and D Games seems to be in legal limbo, which is why you don't see the SSI era "Gold Box" D and D games here.
Posted July 12, 2011
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lowyhong: What's cyberpunk?
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Wraith: I think it has something to do with cybersex and punk music. I'm not sure.
It's complicated, but basically Cyberpunk is an aesthetic which draws from the punk subculture and technology.
Posted July 12, 2011
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GameRager: Why doesn't EA do what it does best and strongarm them into selling the rights to them or using legal tactics?
I thought that what EA did best was pull condescendingly lame and cheap marketing stunts to shamelessly push half-finished and poorly written games out to a gullible audience fixated on sex and violence.
Posted July 12, 2011
To add extra info on the Thief games and System Sock II, all three use the Dark engine, which is a real pain to get running on modern hardware. It was designed for Windows 98, and won't install on any NT-based OS, and also hangs on multi-core CPUs. There are simple fixes GOG could do to sort these, but it also uses DirectDraw 6, which has been deprecated and both ATI and nvidia provide very poor emulation for it. The fan community have created a work-around by writing their own ddraw.dll replacement, but this requires hex-editing the original exe file, something Eidos/EA wouldn't be too keen on.

In short, whilst there are legal problems with getting all three games, GOG would have problems too technically.
Post edited July 12, 2011 by Irenaeus.
Posted July 17, 2011
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Wishbone: These are, roughly, the steps involved in getting a game into the GOG catalog:

1) Find out who holds the rights to the game. This can be next to impossible with some old games, and generally it's more difficult the older the game is. Sometimes, the original developer has changed hands a number of times over the years, gone bankrupt and had their assets auctioned off, had specific IPs sold off to others, etc. Sometimes the rights to a game are split up between several different parties, which makes it even more problematic.

2) Having found the rights holders, GOG needs to convince them to sell the game on GOG. This can be a very lengthy process, provided the rights holders are interested at all.

3) Now GOG needs to negotiate a contract with the rights holders. How large a percentage of each sale goes to whom, etc.

4) Now the technical work begins. If it's a DOS game, it's not so difficult. DOSBox does most of the work, but if it's an old Windows game, sometimes it needs some kind of technical black magic to run on a modern OS. Sometimes they have to give up in the end. As far as I know, they never get access to the games' source code, so they are limited to what they can do "from the outside", so to speak.

5) Then the whole thing needs to be wrapped in an installer. Any extras they can find need to be put together, and a page and forum for the game needs to be made and added to the site.

6) Now they can start selling the game.
I've always wondered about the detailed process; now I appreciate what they do a bit more, it's a s---load of work.
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General discussion (archive)I NEED THESE GAMES!(29 posts)(29 posts)
(29 posts)