Techdirt has a story about all the pains a company had to go through in order to re-release an old game while trying to do right by the rights holders. (In the end they gave up)
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150227/14420330165/no-copyright-lives-forever-how-apathy-ip-rights-holders-about-their-copyrights-fucked-game-re-release-butthole.shtml

Kudos to gog.com and everybody else who manages to get past all the hurdles set up by apathetic rights-holders.

I like how the URL differs from the article title.

Month old news. I still stand by my guess though.

Edit: Forgot to add the latest tweet.

Thanks for the link. I must have missed it.

This apathy is also why copyright law doesn't get fixed. The major rightsholders - which have the political and lobbying clout to steer legislation on copyright - simply don't care enough to lift a finger on the matter. At worst, this intransigence is a small opportunity cost to them, and these copyright failures aren't a significant burden. Copyright law's greatest success - and greatest problem - is that it distributes its burden thinly across the general population. This does create an effective system for remunerating creators without over-taxing anyone in particular, but it also creates a perverse one-sided effect at a political level. The costs are born by the public at large in invisible ways, in the form of products that become unavailable, derivative works that are never made, and higher prices for older works (when they're available at all). The real apathy comes from the general public, which isn't moved by causes they can't see. Everyone can see a 5 cent tax increase on a cup of coffee (though we may disagree over how relevant it is), but can you see that video game that was never created because licensing rights couldn't be negotiated? The broad public pushback isn't there in the same way it is for other issues, so copyright always ratchets invariably in one direction.

This is sad.

The German Constitution requires in Article 14 that "Property entails responsibility".
I know this is a hollow law and nobody seems to care for it anyway, but isn't there something similar in others countries too?

I've probably just made this a Spiderman thread.
"With great power comes..."

It doesn't help that copyright holders didn't anticipate the concept that people in the future might want to play legacy games. So, timed IP contracts were signed.

It sort of reminds me of the 60's and 70's BBC when they started purging their libraries of original serials, not anticipating home video and a demand to watch repeats.

It's sad because a lot of good programming was lost because of that mentality.

Errr...goguys?
Any of you good at developing games with these sort of mechanics?
I would greatly appreciate it if you made a sequel. Use all the exact same names and places and such. Take your time, don't sink too much real money into it (or maybe secretly get Night Dive to fund you? :D), but make sure to REALLY market the hell out of it, make it at least appear to be incredible, even if you can't actually make it good. Then release it, and maybe give it for free, or charge a reasonably cheap price.

At this point, one of the companies will get really angry, dig up the paperwork, throw a C&D at you and threaten to sue. Agree to stop development, and then Night Dive takes over and then emails the same company about those rights.
Problem solved!

Sad day for mankind. :'(
That is indeed a bunch frustrating nonsense.