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Unkillable Cat

Unkillable Cat

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deuxhero said:
I don't get how people can dismiss offers due to not understanding video games. There's nothing game specific here, it's exactly the same as if they owned the rights to an old book or film. You own this IP, someone wants to rerelease it, if you agree you'll get paid and lose nothing but the ability to accept other bids (which don't exist). Agree, get a few thousand dollars and fix your car/get a new TV/pay off your debt/whatever and be done with it.
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It's not about understanding video games as much as it's about understanding copyrights and trademarks of video games.

It would not surprise me that the Herbert estate (or whatever the entity holding the rights is called) still remembers whatever problems and difficulties arose for (and from) the Dune games back in the 90s, and believes that nothing has changed since and it's not worth going through all over again.

Recently I've personally been involved in getting a local author's bibliography finally available again for the first time in decades. What had been the blockage up 'till now was that the author both saw no point in re-releasing them as he considered them irrelevant literature, and that it would be too costly. The latter is true if the books had been re-printed, but instead they were digitized and made available in e-stores. Persuading the author to give the go-ahead was the hardest part, but he's not complaining about the extra income.
 
DayofBlow

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Unkillable Cat said:
Infinitron said:
The fate of Dune 2:

But there was this one guy who knew about the case because he was personally interested and he said that all the rights had reverted to Frank Herbert’s family.

Somehow, I don’t want to know how, one colleague got a contact for them, and they unfortunately said they didn't want to revive anything. It wasn’t a case of not understanding games, just a straight-up, ‘If it’s old it should stay old’. It was so unbelievably frustrating.
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Does this mean they're gonna let the Dune franchise die out in its entirety? It is old, after all.
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Of course not, there's a Hollywood blockbuster coming next year.

Herbert estate gave the runaround because gog intern didn't understand you offer money upfront or they blow you off. They don't know nor care about digital stores and their long term sales for 20 year old games.

Dune 2 isn't even the worst off. There's a good source port called Dune Legacy, with some more modern(compared to D2) improvements to controls and HD res support. You just have to acquire the original files for it, all 11 megs of them. Dune, Dune 2000 and Emperor Battle For Dune are the ones that need help.
 
Koschey

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A misclick while managing game tags sent me to Gothic's store page for the first time in at least half a decade and holy fucking shit, was the banner image always this ugly or is this one of the 'improvements' GOG made recently? This doesn't look like it belongs in a professional store, but rather like programmer art from someone selling 5 copies of his first game to friends out of his garage. Not to mention whom is it depicting? First and third person from left are obviously enough Gorn and Lester respectively, fourth could be either the protagonist or more likely Diego, but the third? Looks like neither Milten nor Xardas or any other mage from the game.

https://af.gog.com/game/gothic?as=1649904300

I just can't get over how amateurish and just plain ugly this looks.
 
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Morkar Left

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Koschey said:
A misclick while managing game tags sent me to Gothic's store page for the first time in at least half a decade and holy fucking shit, was the banner image always this ugly or is this one of the 'improvements' GOG made recently? This doesn't look like it belongs in a professional store, but rather like programmer art from someone selling 5 copies of his first game to friends out of his garage. Not to mention whom is it depicting? First and third person from left are obviously enough Gorn and Lester respectively, fourth could be either the protagonist or more likely Diego, but the third? Looks like neither Milten nor Xardas or any other mage from the game.

https://af.gog.com/game/gothic?as=1649904300

I just can't get over how amateurish and just plain ugly this looks.
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As far as I know that is actually original artwork. But it's just a sketch and not meant as official artwork. It's actually Milten, Lester, Gorn and Diego.
 
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Koschey

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Morkar said:
As far as I know that is actually original artwork. But it's just a sketch and not meant as official artwork. It's actually Milten, Lester, Gorn and Diego.
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I can't remember ever seeing this particular sketch, so I did a quick check of World of Gothic's media section. While I couldn't find the sketch in question, the character designs in the banner fit some early concept art included in this gallery to a T, so I guess it's plausible. I also checked the artworks extra included by GOG, but it's mostly just ingame models of NPCs and monsters without the kickass stuff like in this gallery.

Of course, if it is just a sketch by the original devs, the unfinished look is understandable. On the other hand it makes the decision to feature a very rough sketch that was never intended to be viewed as 'finished' as the page banner all the more retarded.

Some more digging led to the Polish cover:
latest
I didn't immediately recognise it as the cover pose because the German cover for whatever reason omitted Diego. So it seems the GOG banner is an even more lazy hackjob and is just an unflatteringly blownup cutout of the Polish cover artwork (or a sketch of it, noting the colour differences). I guess going with the mask instead would have been too reasonable.

And now I'm noticing I'm spending way too much time looking into this shit.
 
lightbane

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IIIRC Gothic 1 and 2 used the standard "Gothic Symbol" for the web, but nu-GOG can't even do that right.
 
Azalin

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Dux

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The WW2 strategy game Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord was delisted on GOG today. I managed to buy it at the last moment. It was by pure luck that I managed to catch the thread a GOG member made in the general discussion forum. It was all rather lowkey, however, which I'm not a fan of. If there is a game facing imminent delisting then there should be more attention being brought to it. Not through some easily missed thread. Just a small note on the front page or something.

I confess I had no idea what this game was about prior to the announcement but I bought it nonetheless on principle. It was now or never. By the looks of it, this game seems to be quite interesting and in-depth. I'll be able to enjoy it but other WW2 tactical strategy fans might feel left out now, if they held off on buying it. I would've brought it up earlier but I caught it at the last second, pretty much.
 
Squid

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Any reason why it was delisted? How often does this happen on GOG anyway? I know the Fallouts were delisted and relisted with the Bethesda approved ones but that's it.
 
Unkillable Cat

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Squadcar said:
Any reason why it was delisted? How often does this happen on GOG anyway? I know the Fallouts were delisted and relisted with the Bethesda approved ones but that's it.
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Publisher request.

Strategy First is trying to push their own distribution method, which involves some form of DRM from what I could tell.

While various GOG users were hoping to see more games from the series, they get the exact opposite as CM: BO was the only one on GOG. And now it's gone.
 
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