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I think it's basically just "this is complicated, complicated means corporate lawyers, corporate lawyers are expensive enough and the potential profit is small enough that it's not worth it." It's not just "will this be net positive," either. There's an opportunity cost. Those corporate lawyers are needed for other important projects that might make more money.

But also, I kind of think it becomes a thing where it's too small potatoes for anybody senior enough to actually approve all of the legal stuff to care enough to make happen. Sure, it's basically free money, but it's not a lot of free money.

Also, it's not clear who actually owns the thing -- the original game was developed by Monolith Productions and published by Fox Interactive (PC) and Sierra (PS2). Following the tree of deals, there's a bunch of different big corporations that could have a claim on the IP:

- Fox Interactive was eventually sold to Vivendi, but most of their library was listed as owned by 20th Century Fox, which has since been acquired by Disney

- the second and third games in the series were published by Sierra, who over the years have been owned by Comp-U-Card, Vivendi, Activision, and eventually Microsoft

- Monolith Productions were eventually purchased by Warner Bros., who shut the studio down earlier this year

Just from that list, there's a huge list of media conglomerates that could have an ownership claim: News Corp, Disney, Vivendi, Warner Bros., Microsoft

Yeah, just reading that list of corporations and the long, twisted IP ownership trail, I'd estimate figuring out who has which rights would take at least a year and a couple hundred grand in legal costs to get each potential stakeholder's attorneys to locate, review and analyze the documents and issue a binding legal opinion.

I've actually been the "business decision maker" in some similar multi-law firm licensing confusion. It was a situation where my company had no significant financial stake in the outcome and was just trying to be the 'good guy'. In fact, all the big companies were aligned on being willing to just help out the small company trying to get the thing to happen. Despite that sincere intent all around, it was basically impossible to do what they needed without significant expense or even potentially creating new liability for ourselves where there was none. The moral being: don't just assume "we can't have a nice things because of big company assholes". That's sometimes the case but not always. There are execs out there who'd be happy to 'do the right thing' if they can. Over probably a dozen similar situations, there were only a couple were I was able to help a good thing happen - despite actively trying to find a way to make it work.

Phrases like "basically impossible" and "if they can" evoke some kind of physical force stopping an action that everyone, in good faith, wants to take. In your example (and in the article's) it just doesn't seem like everyone actually wants to take the good action.

If the game studios were actually not being assholes, they could each say, "You know what, we're not making any money from whatever rights we might or might not have, so, lawyers: scram and go do something else. Here's a signed paper saying we give up all rights to the IP. Go have a ball."

But, they'll never do this because corporations are like Smaug, as another poster put it--they hoard for hoarding's sake and will never voluntarily give up value, even if it's a fractional share of potential value, and even if that value is not materially helping them. They'd rather destroy something they're not using than give it away.

> If the game studios were actually not being assholes, they could each say, "You know what, we're not making any money from whatever rights we might or might not have, so, lawyers: scram and go do something else. Here's a signed paper saying we give up all rights to the IP. Go have a ball."

Someone else in the thread mentioned “creating liability where we previously had none”. Let’s say all of the game studios in your scenario do what you’re proposing, but as it turns out none of them actually had the right to re-release the soundtrack because of a separate contract that some subset of them had with a music producer. That music producer didn’t even know the game had been re-released until it had been out for two years and it turns out he’s really pissed that he hasn’t been getting royalties…

Maybe this is a rash way to live my life, but I have always believed that in 99% of cases, “liability” is a boogeyman, a spook story, that lawyers scare their kids with. “Don’t misbehave, or Liability’s gonna get ya!” I walk around all day “creating liability” everywhere I go, by simply existing. Never been sued yet.

I know corporations with Serious General Counsel don’t think this way but it’s kind of a shame we have evolved such an intense risk-aversion.

> I'd estimate figuring out who has which rights would take at least a year and a couple hundred grand in legal costs to get each potential stakeholder's attorneys to locate, review and analyze the documents and issue a binding legal opinion.

If you just went ahead and did the release, the stakeholders might well do the research on their own dime. Of course, those that do have rights might not be interested in negotiating a license at that point. And, there's a chance of getting access to a development archive if you're doing an authorized release.

The potential that you spend the money/time just to end up proving that you don't own it is I think the main blocker.

I agree with your points and would add one more: the TFA gives a second-hand recounting of what the various company's lawyers supposedly told the potential reboot licensor and quotes the erstwhile licensor's conclusion they were basically threatening legal action. But this isn't consistent with the companies also indicating they weren't sure what rights they may have (if any).

However, it IS consistent with a thing prudent lawyers would typically do when discussing an unknown future hypothetical. They'd reserve their client's rights should the client later discover they have grounds and wish to pursue it. Depending on how it's phrased, that could be confused with a 'legal threat', but I suspect the lawyers may have just been careful to not unintentionally relinquish any future rights.

I'm basing this on being involved in similar licensing discussions between lawyers. While some lawyers and clients are assholes, not all are. Even if they were trying to be 'good guys', it's not clear they could be in this situation. Since they don't even know if they have any rights, they don't have grounds to grant any kind of permission (and doing so in the absence of having any rights could make their client liable - at least in theory).

Nobody was asking them to give indemnification or grant the license. Each of the potential holders just need to put it down on paper they aren't going enforce rights if they had any, not give the developer a complete license to use. Second can incur liability, first is pretty common clause used in many settlement agreements.

These things typically only work when you are well connected to senior management in these orgs, the ones who can sign off on such one-off requirements. Business processes are designed for the 80% of use-cases. More often than not, we end up hitting a wall with any long tail/unique requests.

Many of these get stuck in contract hell. The original developer may have had licensed software or assets and at the very least needs to find the agreements and understand how they work for new distribution. It's not uncommon for those agreements to have been time limited, but if you want to renew now you need to find the current successor/rightsholder and negotiate.

Also, the developer/publisher/distributor/etc may have had revenue sharing agreements with various parties. Those need to be found and understood too. Sometimes those are in % of gross income, % of net income, % of sales price, or a fixed amount per copy sold. If anything needs addressing, you've got to find those parties or their successors and negotiate. You should also find those parties anyway, to pay royalties they're due, but if you at least set up an escrow account, you'll be prepared when they find you.

I would hope games contracts are a bit more forward looking now, and try to address these things, but 25 years ago, you would still get old games at computer surplus stores... A handful of developers would put out old games collections, but most games never came back.

I imagine there is a legal/admin cost, to locating the paper contract in Iron Mountain/wherever. So if they wait for the game to go ahead anyways, they could wait and see if its a smashing success, then sue and have a budget for tracking the docs down. Perhaps a lawyer could explain if sending a “cough up the docs in 60 days or we are invalidating your claim” would work.

Game Publishers hoard IP like Smaug. I can't even begin to catalog the IP's in the EA, UBI, and Activision's vaults. In many cases, the original creators can't even get the time of day to ask to use the IP.

We just saw an explosion of streaming platforms because of their version of 2). Instead of continuing to license to Netflix for a percentage, they decided to spend all of the time/money to develop their own streaming platforms in hopes of keeping all of the proceeds. Maybe they have internal dialog looking at this same comparison which has not settled out yet. The streaming platforms have shown rolling your own is not a guaranteed panacea.

They had no choice. The rational choice for Netflix would always be to verticalize and sell their own content.

3. They believe the IP may have potential that you won't exploit to the fullest.

In other words, they believe that they may be able to do more than you with it, if they ever get around to it.

If your potential market is tiny--and lets be honest, the market for an unpirated version of this is quite small,most people sufficiently interested have pirated it already--then keeping it out of the public in favor of some unknown potential later is a consideration.

I don't want to claim that NOLF is comparable to Zork, and without a doubt times have changed a lot since then, but it comes to my mind that it's a notable fact that even half forgotten and seemingly out-of-fashion IP can be much more valuable than anyone at any given time assumes.

Namely back in 1992, having the rights to Infocom's catalogue, which earlier had been put up for grabs for 25k, literally saved a then bankrupt Activision (!) when they rereleased it as a compilation of The Lost Treasures of Infocom, for millions of revenue in total. [1]

In addition to the problems and cost of establishing ownership that other people mentioned, I suppose this story was one hell of a lesson for any publisher not to forfeit any rights you may or may not be holding.

[1] https://www.filfre.net/2019/04/an-unlikely-savior/

> I struggle to understand why the (potential?) rights-holders are so intransigent about this.

> you will get a fixed percentage of every sale"--that seems like an easy win-win, does it not?

It's really not an easy win-win. Entertainment falls into the attention economy, so if you're giving rights to some low-value IP away for pennies but it winds up getting popular, that's lost revenue elsewhere that might be more valuable.

On top of that these media corporations are borderline militant with defending their vaults of IP because it's the only way to distinguish themselves in a crowded landscape. Exclusivity is essentially the only way they can compete, and giving away rights for peanuts is not in their interest.

These companies default to saying "no" and when you add in the complexity of finding documents that may not exist, it's not hard to see why it'll never happen.

What companies hear is, in effect, “Please make it easier for me to create a competing product and take away business from your existing IP:s that you are trying to create mindshare for.”

But big media companies don't operate on rationality alone... they operate on bureaucracy, ego, and fear of liability

"If a company came up to me"

See, there's the difference. You, as a sole person, can easily decide giving permission or not. But they, as a group of employees, contain not a single one whose job description is "give away stuff". There isn't some keeper of the back catalogue who could confidently say "yeah, no problem". Who knows, perhaps some skunkwors division has just sunk a few million into reviving the IP. It all falls up towards the CEO and that level is rarely bothered with pittances like some inherited old license. And chances are even they would not dare, because ultimately they aren't the owner, their employer is and who knows what they would like to happen to the IP