GOG - Rescuing 13 Forgotten Realms Games

PC gamer has an article up informing is on how GOG rescued the 13 Forgotten Realms games from licensing hell and made them available again.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, the roleplay system Dungeons and Dragons was huge, and so were the spin-off video games set in the Forgotten Realms—titles like Pool of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Hack and the awesomely-named Menzoberranzan. Why have you never played them? Because, like Planescape: Torment and Baldur’s Gate, they’ve spent twenty years lost in licensing hell. And Good Old Games has finally tracked them down.

For Good Old Games finding the missing games, establishing who owned which parts of them, and getting them into a playable state has taken many years. Their first step was to work out who owned what. After all, the original developers SSI disappeared into Mindscape in 1994, before being passed through The Learning Company, Mattel and Ubisoft—and this game was licensed from TSR, who closed in 1997.

As GOG’s Oleg Klapovsky explained to us, “with classic games like those from the Forgotten Realms series, years of mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies can really leave the rights sitting in very strange places… like banks, or enormous conglomerates. Sometimes the original documents aren't even digitized, so somebody has to physically head down to the figurative cellar and dig through countless cabinets.” On top of that, the art, the music, the license, the digital distribution rights, the code can all be owned by different people.

So GOG went to SSI, and hence to Ubisoft, who were also the publisher of the first SSI game. “After considerable back and forth, it unfortunately (though perhaps fortunately for us) turned out to be a dead end.” says Klapovsky. “The rights were not with Ubisoft. They were sold or left behind somewhere along the way.”

Thanks Pongo.

More information.

Very interesting to see the twisted trail they had to take to find the rights owner. At least now it looks like GOG themselves holds the rights to these games. I hope they are working acquiring the rights to the Dragonlance games too.

Yes, the DL games were some of the better GoldBox releases, especially since they benefited from fine tuning of the game engine interface. Dark Queen of Krynn was my favorite. (It didn't hurt that it was one of the few that were ported to the Mac at the time.)

Nice article! Thanks!

Especially tickled that GoG reimplemented the codewheels.

And this is among the many reasons GoG rocks, and will have my support forever (subject to me changing my mind if I get annoyed, of course)!!!

C&C creators Westwood’s minigame RPG Hillsfar

Oooooh baby, Hillsfar was a great game. Can't see it on GOG though.

Originally Posted by Ryder
Oooooh baby, Hillsfar was a great game. Can't see it on GOG though.

It's part of this bundle --> http://www.gog.com/game/forgotten_re…collection_two

Originally Posted by JDR13
It's part of this bundle --> http://www.gog.com/game/forgotten_re…collection_two

Thanks.

Interesting read. They mention Seven Dragon Saga at the end, wasn't that a failed KS from a while back?

Dragonlance Gold Box Games coming to GOG: Confirmed.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Especially tickled that GoG reimplemented the codewheels.

Indeed! Had good fun with the Monkey Island code wheel way back. Mix'n'Mojo.

Originally Posted by Arhu
Dragonlance Gold Box Games coming to GOG:

Alright! Those will come to the front of my humungous backlog when available.

In my world dealing with dated copyrights and licenses can be a nightmare. Depending on what it is, its often easier to make a risk assessment, make the product, and see if someone materializes with the rights.
Might not be the best way to operate but often its the most effective. As they said. .. you can spend years checking musty basements for a certificate that may not even exist.

Yet another reason to put a permanent sunset on copyrights and licenses after about 7 years.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Yet another reason to put a permanent sunset on copyrights and licenses after about 7 years.

If people knew how much technology, progress, innovation etc.. has been hampered by these laws they would be riot. By and large people have this image of the starving genius inventor creating the next big thing and that the laws are there for his protection. It couldn't be further from the truth.

Originally Posted by Wisdom
If people knew how much technology, progress, innovation etc.. has been hampered by these laws they would be riot. By and large people have this image of the starving genius inventor creating the next big thing and that the laws are there for his protection. It couldn't be further from the truth.

It's mostly just another form of corporate welfare.

I call this the "Rights Hell".

Originally Posted by Thrasher
It's mostly just another form of corporate welfare.

I call this "corporate parasitism". They such all the "great inventors" out as much as possible, leaving only an empty hull or shell behind, which gets tossed around - like with the rights of these ancient games.

They get tossed around because no more money can get sucked out of them anymore.
Thus, they are uninteresting for money-sucking companies.