VGEsoterica
Member
Remember all those old games from back in the day you loved and are surprised that they haven't been remade yet? Or gotten a sequel?
There's a good chance someone has tried reviving the series and been met with the licensing hell hole! Sega is usually a perfect example of losing licenses to properties in their games but it definitely happens to other devs too!
Perfect case in point : No One Lives Forever and it's sequel. Two amazing games from the early 2000's which instantly became classics and really modernized the FPS genre with some awesome new mechanics and a cheesy fun storyline. So you'd expect after two great games we'd eventually see a third game or at least a modern HD remake right?
Nope! and why? Because nobody is even 100% sure who OWNS the property. Is it Activision after they bought Vivendi? Is it Warner Brothers? Is it the original devs? The last official statement was apparently the Activision legal team saying "we dont think we own the rights".
So basically...nobody even knows who currently owns the IP to the NOLF franchise and any dev that wants to pitch a remake/new game doesn't even know how to talk to.
Thankfully some skilled modders came into the fold and modernized the game to run natively in Windows 10 with some great improvements but wow....a franchise that nobody knows who the owner even is!
It's such a bummer and seeming to get more and more common. It 100% blocks anyone doing anything with the properies due to fear of being sued even if nobody knows what direction the lawsuit would even be coming from. Plus it keeps people from getting new games in some of their favorite franchises as this is def not a one off experience.
There's a good chance someone has tried reviving the series and been met with the licensing hell hole! Sega is usually a perfect example of losing licenses to properties in their games but it definitely happens to other devs too!
Perfect case in point : No One Lives Forever and it's sequel. Two amazing games from the early 2000's which instantly became classics and really modernized the FPS genre with some awesome new mechanics and a cheesy fun storyline. So you'd expect after two great games we'd eventually see a third game or at least a modern HD remake right?
Nope! and why? Because nobody is even 100% sure who OWNS the property. Is it Activision after they bought Vivendi? Is it Warner Brothers? Is it the original devs? The last official statement was apparently the Activision legal team saying "we dont think we own the rights".
So basically...nobody even knows who currently owns the IP to the NOLF franchise and any dev that wants to pitch a remake/new game doesn't even know how to talk to.
Thankfully some skilled modders came into the fold and modernized the game to run natively in Windows 10 with some great improvements but wow....a franchise that nobody knows who the owner even is!
It's such a bummer and seeming to get more and more common. It 100% blocks anyone doing anything with the properies due to fear of being sued even if nobody knows what direction the lawsuit would even be coming from. Plus it keeps people from getting new games in some of their favorite franchises as this is def not a one off experience.