Generally, it's because of potential rightsholder's issues, either due to transfers of rights between companies, purchases of those companies, terms the current rightsholder set in their contractual agreement with CD Projekt, Valve, EA, or other retailers,ect. A lot of game development studios do not stay in business very long in comparison to most other industries' companies, and rights transferring to various other corporations as part of bankruptcy sales, efforts to keep the company alive, buy outs, previously existing contractual conditions between developers and publishers, ect, is pretty much inevitably going to occur as a result of that.

System shock 1 and 2, for example, had completely seperates rights holders one of whom, an insurance company in Massachusets, wasn't even originally aware they'd ended up the owner to the franchise rights on everything but the second game which looking glass studios published.

Retailers are generally required by law to remove games, books, movies, ect for sale if there's any question about ownership rights of the intellectual property in question, until such time as they have an arrangement with the new rightsholder or proof that the person they previously contracted with retains such rights.

It's kind of like a few years back when Interplay started really pushing sales of old games they'd acted as publisher or distributor for to literally any retailer that'd take them, only to get caught having done so with several game franchises they'd literally not had any rights to do anything but personally distribute decades earlier on behalf of third party developers, or even tried to sell games they'd previously sold the rights to other developers to, such as the Fallout franchise.

Basically, CD Projekt's gog.com division could get into a significant heap of potential legal trouble, or possibly even retaining those titles sale even if negotiations with the new rightsholders goes well if they *don't* remove these titles immediately, until they can prrove either the current rightsholderr has relinquished all rights, has granted rights of sale, distribution, ect to gog.com, ect until such time as whatever negotiations take place finish.

Hope it returns. Had wanted to buy it here... but wasn't near the top of the list. Hopefully it's not like Severance and stays gone.

Same here. But I hope it'll be back. It's very unique game and important part of crpg genre's history.

NOTE: The following message was cross-posted with the thread on the Darklands Community section, https://www.gog.com/forum/darklands/has_darklands_been_removed_from_gog_permanently.

While DARKLANDS is currently still available on Steam, sometime within the past few days the listed Publisher has changed from "Retroism/NightDive" to "Ziggurat." There is a Ziggurat Games with a boardgame title "World War IV: One World, One King." But I have no idea whether they are one and the same. There is a zigguratgames.com domain registered with GoDaddy, but only has a default parking page -- no actual company web-site, per se.

A change in publisher would very well explain it's disappearance from GOG. Let's hope this is temporary and something get's worked out. I wouldn't think "DRM" should be an issue, since Retroism (Tommo+NightDive) should have already had that worked out. Besides, so-called copy protection within Darklands was minimal at best (it's trivial to suppress).

Cross posting from the Darklands forum topic:

From the rest of the games for which they appear as publishers, it just seems they had some money and decided to buy the rights for a few games.

By the way, Slave Zero is on that list and it was also for sale at GOG and is not anymore, so it's very likely all the games they are publishing where pulled from GOG. Maybe there are other less popular ones as well?

There is this Iranian dev by the name Ziggurat, and even if its a long shot, it sounds much more plausible for them to be this Ziggurat than a board game company:
http://www.zigguratgame.ir/EN/index.html

Note: This update mirrors one posted to the parallel thread in the Darklands forum topic.

I think I've found it... It looks like a (new?) subsidiary or division of Cosmi ValuSoft: Ziggurat Interactive, Inc. The titles listed for the Ziggurat publisher on Steam and the catalogs of Cosmi/ValuSoft line up.

Also, on the Tommo Inc. website (the last confirmed IP owners), ValuSoft Cosmi is listed as one of their publishing partners through their Retroism brand; and this is echoed on the Retroism site, as well.

MobyGames has a listing for company called Ziggurat Interactive that published a couple of ports for Sony, Nintendo and mobile platforms in 2006-2007, but I'm not sure (yet) that the two entities are related. (There was also a Zigurat Software S.L., spelled with a single "G", that published 8-bit titles in the 80's, but they haven't been active since 1992.)

So, the proverbial fruit may not have fallen so far from the tree, after all. But details are still sketchy. Not much has been confirmed as yet, so this is conjecture on my part. Hopefully we'll have more concrete information soon...


Btw- I've also posted this update on the relevant threads on the Steam Darklands boards, and on the Darklands group list at: https://groups.io/g/darklands

Cheers for keeping everyone up to date, much appreciated.
Looks like it's just a matter of time until Darklands as well as Slave Zero are going to pop up in GoG's search index again.

I already have them but it's nice to know a comeback it's possible. Like we had with Alan Wake and XIII. I wish the same for Death Gate and Severance at one point, two games that I have missed to buy and seem to be in limbo.

Over on the GOG Wishlist board Dareios90 has posted a plea for GOG to bring back Darklands: https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/darklands

If you too would like to see Darklands on GOG again soon, please add your messages of support. I've added mine!

Thx all!
-mwirkk

https://zigguratinteractive.com
https://www.facebook.com/zigguratinteractive
https://twitter.com/playziggurat

In case anyone would be willing to inquire about the ongoing absence of Darklands and Slave Zero from the GoG catalogue and if and when that's going to be addressed/dealt with.

Thanks Swedrami. I've reposted these links for Ziggurat you've provided to the Darklands group on Groups.io.

https://groups.io/g/darklands/topic/ziggurat_a_new_and_old/71025791

-matt.wirkkala(mwirkk)

The official website for Ziggurat Interactive now appears to be https://www.ziggurat.games/. Darklands appears visibly in their list of upcoming titles.

Thanks to NightDive Studios for retweeting a post from ShackNews about an exclusive interview they had with Ziggurat which was published just yesterday:
https://www.shacknews.com/article/116668/ziggurat-interactive-aims-to-bring-back-classic-games-exclusive-interview

Also, from Indie Retro News, http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/03/ziggurat-interactive-plans-to-remaster.html . They say they were tipped off by Blues News: https://www.bluesnews.com/s/208675/three-game-remasters-announced

I have yet to see the actual "Press Release" that was mentioned in the ShackNews interview. If anyone stumbles across it, please pass it along. {Update 3/6: a general search showed the vast majority of articles published about it on Tuesday were verbatim the exact same text, so it became apparent that that must have been the actual PR content. Thx! go to GOG member 'Links' for confirming and providing source on the other thread.}

Btw- Slave Zero is listed there as well!

Thx!
-mwirkk

I am glad to see Fields of Glory there. I wish It is offered in GOG as a new microprose oldie and Darklands and Killing Time come back.

This is sad and I hope they will come back.

Bought in the past slave zero thankfully (I also still have an original physical copy from back in the day).