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Blood seriesWho Owns the Rights to the Blood Franchise?(63 posts)(63 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 03, 2013
This is something I have been pondering on as well.

There are so many good old games out there that can rarely see the light of day thanks to unbelievably convoluted legistlation.
Posted June 03, 2013
Someone with some pull should get in touch with em and see if they do actually want to sell the rights and if not WHY??
Posted June 03, 2013
The 4-traders article mentioned that Atari "owns and/or manages a portfolio of more than 200 games". I suspect that they want to trim off a few titles that will see them clear of their current financial issues and will let them reorganize as a new publishing house. We will have to wait and see what the court says in August. I would suspect that if they get it all settled by then, they might be interested in talking to Jason Hall again; considering how well the Internet gaming community reacted to the news that their might be a new Blood title in the works.

Now it will be interesting to see what the new Atari looks like, if they remain purely a publishing house or of they branch out into game development.
Posted June 03, 2013
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DustyStyx: The 4-traders article mentioned that Atari "owns and/or manages a portfolio of more than 200 games". I suspect that they want to trim off a few titles that will see them clear of their current financial issues and will let them reorganize as a new publishing house. We will have to wait and see what the court says in August. I would suspect that if they get it all settled by then, they might be interested in talking to Jason Hall again; considering how well the Internet gaming community reacted to the news that their might be a new Blood title in the works.

Now it will be interesting to see what the new Atari looks like, if they remain purely a publishing house or of they branch out into game development.
One way or the other it seems like a source port would be a win-win for whoever embarks on the project. I still think that a crowd-funded project would mitigate any fears they might have. After all, if it doesn't get funded no harm, no foul. If it does, they make a game. But in truth it would most likely get overfunded by a large margin.
Posted June 03, 2013
MOO franchise for 100.000$ hmmm might talk to my Bankmanager and scoop that up. Imagine having the rights and the income for this and future games in the series. (My bankmanager would never lend me the money unfortunately)
Posted July 03, 2013
The guys who made Outcast bought the IP back from Atari. I think there's some hope on the horizon for Blood.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-03-outcast-creators-buy-ip-from-atari-announce-franchise-revival
Posted July 03, 2013
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mr.disco: The guys who made Outcast bought the IP back from Atari. I think there's some hope on the horizon for Blood.
That's great! I wonder how many titles they have in negotiations right now.
Posted July 03, 2013
OK...SERIOUSLY!

If Rise of the Triad can get an honest-to-the-original remake (and by all accounts it looks like it has so far) then why can't Blood??

God I hope they can buy back the rights and get to work on an honest port and then MAYBE, if they can get back to the feel, style, creativity, old horror movie references, and dark humor of the original, they could reboot the series.
Posted July 03, 2013
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DustyStyx: Because Atari is just a publisher, not a developer. They would have to hire some one that can read what code is what to make Blood work with the open source version of Build, sans Bink* codecs.

Honestly the only way I think we would see Blood source code would be if it were "leaked".

EDIT: Bink, not Blink. http://www.radgametools.com/bnkmain.htm
They wouldn't have to do anything of the kind. What they would have to do is 1. Consider if the IP is valuable enough that releasing source code wouldn't undermine business motivations and 2. Have legal team draft a license and possibly 3. Remove any proprietary under-license software development libraries they use (such as Bink, etc).

The problem is releasing source code is not a cut-and-dry thing. It treks through much legal territory, all of which costs money, and the motivation and payoff often doesn't warrant the effort for them.

I asked John Carmack if he'd release the source code to Keen not too long ago and he said he would but he wouldn't push Zenimax to do it at this point. Basically, Zenimax would need to pay to do it and there's little upside for them. John Romero said he would and that he thought he had the source too, but it would need id's blessing, which doesn't seem forthcoming.

This is the problem when something has gone too long without having had the source released. It becomes a legal jungle to be navigated in order to put it out, and most of these companies are more concerned with what can make money immediately than a fan community.
Post edited July 03, 2013 by Firebrand9
Posted July 03, 2013
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DustyStyx: Because Atari is just a publisher, not a developer. They would have to hire some one that can read what code is what to make Blood work with the open source version of Build, sans Bink* codecs.
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Firebrand9: They wouldn't have to do anything of the kind.
I'm pretty sure they would. I was just skipping to your step 3: "Remove any proprietary under-license software development libraries they use (such as Bink, etc). " Blood has had such a long history of being bounced around between developers AND publishers that your final statement of it being a legal jungle is the real crux of the situation. It started off as a 3D Realms project (Horror 3D) under their Q Studios branch, then the members of Q Studios decided they would break out on their own and formed Monolith bringing Blood along with them. So Blood was finished and published by GT Interactive and Eidos in some cases. Then GT Interactive bought Blood and Blood II, but Monolith may have retained some rights to it, because Warner Brothers claimed the trademark. So GT gets bought by Infogrames, who also buys Atari and are currently in bankruptcy.... given all that... and THEN sort out what kind of licencing they have for Build, Bink, et al.

...It really makes the head swim.
Posted July 03, 2013
That's a bit of weasel-wording/white-washing and 3 is only a possibility. It's not like Doom where the DMX library was under proprietary license purely to id. The libraries used in the Build engine and for Blood are large-scale licenses. IE - Nonproprietary. All it means for the end-user is that it would not compile without removal of those function calls. All the legal issues have more to do with ownership of the IP itself, not the library licenses. To say "pretty sure" assumes you know about the exact licensing their technology utilized. As I said, at best, it's a possibility, not a probability.
Posted July 04, 2013
Firebrand9,

I don't have knowledge of their exact licensing. How could I? It's a bit of a leap to take the statement "pretty sure" and turn it into exact knowledge. All I have is observation. I think we agree on more than not, but you seem to want to call me a weasel and be argumentative, so I apologize if I seem a bit on the defensive, but this is how I came to my conclusion of what would need to happen for a Blood source release.

Think about it in the order of events:

3D Realms would have negotiated some kind of license with Ken Silverman to use the Build engine. At the time it was proprietary software and thus they had a proprietary agreement. When Blood started development at 3D Realms, they more than likely did so under whatever agreement 3D Realms already had. We can surmise that the original agreement was somewhat restrictive because when they released the code for Duke Nukem in 2003, it was a port to work with the open-source version of the Build engine, not the proprietary version that they licensed.

When Q Studios struck out on their own and became Monolith they were able to get Blood away from 3D Realms.
The question is, did they then re-license Build from Silverman directly, or did they just inherit the 3D Realms license they were already using? Either way, chances are that they didn't go in for the re-re-licensing agreement option for Build, if it was ever on the table. So going with that in mind, I am assuming that Monolith and thus, Atari can't just release the source code they have for Blood unless they get the OK from Silverman, and RAD Game Tools, and possibly 3D Realms. That would require lawyers and investment, regardless of how free and open-source things are now, because they are still under the original license agreement.

That leave two other options:
1. Hire a programer to port Blood over to the existing open-source Build engine, as 3D Reals did with Duke Nukem,
2. Hire a programer to strip all the function calls (which you mentioned) to the original, licensed Build and Bink code and release it in the raw.

So yes, I'm "pretty sure" Atari is a publisher, not a developer and they would have to hire a some one to sort out the code before they could release it.

If you can verify that any of the above is wrong, please do. I have a hard time seeing anything wrong with it (but I'm biased). It's simple and fits the evidence that has come to light over the years.
Posted July 08, 2013
Lucas "Hammer".
Posted July 09, 2013
Ok, I am seriously getting pissed. Now Shadow Warrior has an HD re-release on steam. Seriously, Shadow Warrior is getting the royal treatment and Blood is going to be left languishing due to the death throws of some corporate behemoth. God I hate the corporate world.

I'm guessing Redneck Rampage will get an HD makeover before Blood.
Post edited July 09, 2013 by morhlis
Posted July 09, 2013
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morhlis: Ok, I am seriously getting pissed. Now Shadow Warrior has an HD re-release on steam. Seriously, Shadow Warrior is getting the royal treatment and Blood is going to be left languishing due to the death throws of some corporate behemoth. God I hate the corporate world.

I'm guessing redneck Rampage will get an HD makeover before Blood.
Be patient and see how things pan out after the auctions this month. I'm really interested to see what kind of house the new not-Atari will be.
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This is my favourite topic
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Blood seriesWho Owns the Rights to the Blood Franchise?(63 posts)(63 posts)
(63 posts)