Food for thought.
Meanwhile, Night Dive had been talking with Warner Bros. independently to try to get a deal nailed down. "We wanted Warner involved with this," Kuperman told me, "so we said, there's two ways we could work together. First, and our preference, is that we would do a licensed deal. We would pay them some amount of money up front to show that we're serious, and then we would give them a backend share of revenues. And if that didn't work for them, if they wanted to be the publisher of record, we'll still do the development and the optimization of the game, and instead of our giving them a backend share, [they] give us a backend share. In either case, it seemed to us that they were gonna be making money that they wouldn't have been making otherwise, with a minimum amount of effort.
{snip}
"They come back with a response that said they're not looking to either publish the game themselves at this time, or to partner with us," Kuperman said. "Those options, they're not going to accept either one of them. So basically, we're back to square one."
This transpired in December of 2014. WB must have been in negotiations with GOG at that point, and probably have already finalized the contracts. Could it be that GOG has offered to do the compatibility work themselves, thus WB didn't see any point in working with Night Dive, because they are already working with GOG? If they were publishers with Night Dive Studios as developers, they would be giving a piece of the pie to Night Dive, if they licensed NOLF to Night Dive, they would be getting a smaller cut. If GOG does the work though, WB's cut would be the standard 70%.
Unlikely, but there may be hope yet.
