That was a great franchise many would love to see here.

Unfortunately they are in a deep circle of rights hell. FASA ripped off some Japanese mecha from Macross for some of their own designs back in the day when the world was a bigger place. This eventually caught up with them and the American rights holder, Harmony Gold put a stop to that. For whatever reason, they couldn't come to an agreement and the old infringing mechs can't be used. It's really a shame.

That would be cool especially the 3rd one.

The rights are entirely held by Microsoft, who have never put a game of theirs on GOG. So, no go.

That's quite interesting giving the fact that CD Projekt Red and Microsoft are in very good relations. C'mon Microsoft! Toss some of your games here! I'd love to see Mechwarrior series.

I don't know if there are any microsoft games in GOG but the fact is that the XBOX integration is the only official one right now.
If the relations are fluid it would be an interesting opportunity to bring back titles like Combat Flight Simulator and Crimsom skies. Those titles probably could be instant hits like the Blizzard ones.

Microsoft only owns the right for Mechwarrior 3 + 4.
But as for Mechwarrior 1 + 2 (originally published by Activision) I remember reading some time ago that the main issue was that FASA had used concepts based on japanese Anime (like Snickersnack wrote). Which prevented any game displaying such concepts to ever being sold again.
But it seems those copyright isssues have been resolved somehow:

https://www.sarna.net/news/harmony-gold-and-piranha-games-lawsuit-has-been-resolved/

Son't know how this applies to the other older Battletech games, though.
Maybe it's just a case of GOG convincing Activision to sell the first 2 MW games here. Which probably isn't gonna be easy, since Activision are such greedy bastards.

Everyone keep voting on the Wishlist. Maybe one day...
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/mechwarrior_mechcommander_series

No, they own the whole IP, that's why Piranha Games is their licensee (see legal print). That happened when they absorbed FASA.

Good info karnak1! Thanks for the update. I was not expecting that after so much time.

Are you talking about the original FASA ips?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FASA_Studio


GOG is selling several games which were once licensed by Games Workshop. These publishers have since lost the license. Still the games can be sold.
Why can't the same apply to old Battletech licenses, like the Activision ones? I don't have a clue how these legal issues are settled, hence my questions.

I'm talking about the Battletech/MechWarrior/MechCommander IP. Microsoft acquired FASA in the 1990s and by transition holds the keys. That's the also the only reason MS' logo appeared in MechWarrior 3 that they had no other contributions to, for example. Piranha still answers to them for MWO and MW5.

Games Workshop's license has been given quite liberally throughout the years, and some of these titles are published by GOG themselves (e.g. Rites of War) just to have them out there.

Microsoft's stance on re-releases is different: unless they can make a remaster-y sort of thing, they just don't bother, especially not on a DRM-free platform. Hell, back in the days when games were re-released for budget prices in fugly keep cases, Microsoft let Ubisoft distribute the games so they didn't have to move a muscle.

They did hand MW4 Mercenaries to MekTek for a while, who distributed a modded version for free, but when they packed it in, they didn't care much. MW3 would need a real good patching to even have most users able to run it (it's horribly unstable), and I don't even know if they have the sources for MW1 and MW2.

Thanks for the explanation.