This story, in a nutshell, shows why it's ludicrous to have a 70-year copyright term. There are large swaths of our culture that are going to be locked away for decades precisely because <i>everybody</i>, corporations and individuals alike, are bad at keeping records for longer than a decade or so.<p>If we'd had a more reasonable copyright system, No One Lives Forever would have been public domain by now, and anyone would have been free to update it, re-release it, use its assets for other projects, etc. Instead, it's (figuratively) locked away in a warehouse somewhere, like the Holy Grail at the end of Indiana Jones.
Think corporate guys. Set up and LLC, use it to launch the game, if it gets sued you tow it out to sea and sink it. The multiple publishers involved can't decide who owns it and won't release the rights? Just means that the cost of transferring title and wrapping up all the legal/contractual issues is more than they want to throw away on a scrap of publicity. Give them a target with a dollar sign hanging from it and they'll either work out who owns it or present a united front to demand a share of any revenue.<p>Corporations feed on money. If you want something from them, you use it as a lure, like bringing a deer to a salt lick.
I had completely forgotten about this game and now that I read this I really would love to play it again.<p>It is baffling how something like this could happen, media companies sit on so many properties like this that they will never exploit. I know that in some cases not using the property is some sort of strategy but in cases like this they are leaving money on the table. Might be peanuts to them but it seems like an opportunity for some in-house streamlining to fully exercise dead properties.
This stuff always depresses me when I hear about it - I definitely feel we need stronger laws to aid people in reviving abandonware.
I'd love to know more about Warner's reasoning for not going forward with a deal - it's essentially free money
So release the game, get sued tell the court the plaintiff has no standing unless they can prove they own the game. Then once the courts have ruled who "owns" it, settle with them by paying a licensing fee.
What if the developers... forget to password-protect the server that hosts the source code, installers, etc. Can the law touch cases of... negligence like this?
If no-one can establish ownership and they have the source code and assets, why not just release it? I'm sure if there were vested interests would lawyer up and make themselves known pretty quickly. Clearly in this case it's easier to ask for forgiveness rather than for permission
The author of this article apparently feels the need to state every important point twice.<p><pre><code> Last week, Night Dive founder Stephen Kick and director of
business development Larry Kuperman emailed me to let me
know that while they had indeed planned to re-release No
One Lives Forever and its sequel, they'd hit a wall and
been forced to give up. ... Night Dive is currently
abandoning its efforts to revive No One Lives Forever.</code></pre>
Damn I was just thinking about this game 2 days ago in the car thinking they must have resolved it by now.<p>NOLF will probably get remade as a mod or fan game.
I played No One Lives Forever 1+2 and its spinoff (Contract Jack) again in 2014. They are still superb games and run fine in Win7 x64 1080p.<p>Sadly, such long (40+ hours) single player first person shooter games that offered a innovative gameplay, very good story and humour are a thing of the past.<p>New games that focus on gameplay and learn why Deus Ex 1 and No One Lives Forever 1 were such outstanding games, would be great. But such games can only be created when creative game designers are let alone with enough cash, and no business people in sight.