Surely EA have enough damned souls free to work on a rewrite? If not, perhaps they could ask CDPR in the next circle for some spare resource?

I don't think I follow you, especially that part about "rewrite". My point is that we have a big clumsy company with lots of games from the old era. So why bother financing some dull remakes for some old forgotten games, let's license IP rights to some other party, let them do the game, and get profits from sales with zero investing, the only downfall is loosing a few coppers from GOG/Origin sales. And what do you know if sales are good then maybe they'll think about relaunch, at least that's how some management think (some).

But the thing is that System Shock 2 is no longer owned by EA. Just because they don't give up easily or cheaply, doesn't mean that they won't ever give them up. Plenty of games once published by EA years ago, no longer have anything to do with them.

Yes, it could be as you said and EA is just licensing their games to another company. But them selling their properties is not unprecedented.

Sorry, it’s sarcasm, I was implying that EA are Evil incarnate and that CDPR were a close second.

I would believe that EA can sell Ultima Underworld 1-2 (Looking Glass, ex Blue Sky Productions) and Syndicate 1-2 for quite a lot of money, but I can't see a potential buyer, everyone names NightDive as the most prominent candidate yet I doubt they have enough money, and System Shock case was special because most of the IP rights were bought out from the Insurance Company, and no one was interested in that asset, not even EA, yes. Meaning NightDive just paid money to Orion (or whatever their name was) and nothing to EA which have not even prolonged their ownership, OR they paid little money to EA as well. I can't compare that possible case of Ultima Underworld / Syndicate buyout and System Shock complete ownership by NightDive (ownership for developing and publishing rights System Shock 3 by Tencent are part of a license). The only possible and crazy enough buyer with lots of money I can think of is the Embracer Group (THQ Nordic). What else, let's imagine they actually sold the rights to another entity, what about Ultima franchise? Publishing Ultima Underworld 3 would require a licensing rights (with short expiration period and quite costly), so in any case it would require a process of licensing rights. As for the Syndicate, EA produced it's own FPS game developed by StarBreeze, what about that game? I mean I highly doubt EA would sell, or leave other games intact just like that. That's not how things work... usually.

Isn't CDPR busy with the boatload of future 2077 patches(that they need to make to make the game halfway decent)? ;)

Shadow man was removed a little before Shadow man Remastered was released, but you might be correct about other cases.

Minor fyi: looks like Nightdive is not involved: https://twitter.com/pripyatbeast/status/1415148263620038658

Otherside Entertainment (the folks responsible for the Underworld Ascendant disaster) are apparently working on a new game and IP.

Since the studio is being run by Paul Neurath and Spector (the guys behind the original Ultima Underworld) and the studio is in the hands of Tencent, I wonder if...

Apparently not, or it's HIGHLY confidential because they nearly lost it with System Shock 3 until Tensent came for the rescue. Who in his right mind will finance the development
https://otherside-e.com/wp/

Then why the hell would they demand such a heavy background for their new "lead designer" job?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/co2ya3tqtt7ca77/Lead%20Engineer%20Role%20-%20July%202021.docx?dl=0

It could, of course, be just another game, completely apart from any of the old classic IPs.
But I don't think the money issue really applies. Chinese investors have enough money to burn(launder?) as once can see with the epic store and its almost neverending supply of freebies.

OR it could be just a development overhaul for SS3 since they fired 99% of stuff already (99% is probably just an inaccurate exaggeration used with the whole purpose to strengthen my point). I mean I don't see a point to appoint a small indie studio with 2 veteran developers and skeleton team which is in knee-deep in game development's hell.

P.S. In my previous post I meant of course "Who in his right mind will finance..." not "How in hist right mind" - sorry for confusion.

Could indeed be.

And then I got this in my email this morning... (These games are available to be claimed for free for a month's time)