Comment by mjpearson
10 years ago
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
Activision and Fox aren't currently bothered enough to dig the contract out of whatever box it's in. But if there were a guaranteed damages payment in it they'd probably put a bit more effort in.
Honestly it sounds like Fox offered a pretty reasonable deal: "They [said they] might or might not have physical records to support their position, and the location of those records was not determined. So if we wanted to do a deal that paid them enough as a kind of guarantee, they would look into their records to see if they had anything. And if it turned out they didn't have ownership, they would refund that up-front guarantee. We chose not to pursue this option [and] they said, basically, 'Fine, whatever.'" I'm curious why they (Night Dive) didn't want to take that.
My first guess is that the up-front money was more than Night Dive felt sure they could make on it. Or more than they could afford to part with right now.
We live in a magical world where there might be no one with enough rights to release it, but many entities with enough rights to block it.
But by then they would've spent the money needed to update the game to a releasable game state plus any legal costs triggered by other parties "lawyering up," perhaps only to have the rug pulled out from under them.
That's why you set up a separate entity to limit your liability first. Since the aim is to revive a game for its own sake rather than exploit it commercially, it doesn't matter if the entity in question goes bust.
> That's why you set up a separate entity to limit your liability first.
That may limit their liability, but it won't prevent them from losing their investment.
> Since the aim is to revive a game for its own sake rather than exploit it commercially
I think that's incorrect. I do not get the impression that Night Dive Studios exists as some kind of game preservation charity. It seems like a business that occupies a small niche around reviving old games to exploit them commercially.