It appears that Night Dive "might" be releasing System Shock 1 in the near future!

Quote from the link found below for those who do not wish to travel off-site:
"""
Hello Larry,

I have removed the download of System Shock Portable, into which a whole community including myself have invested years of work.
This game was once created by a bunch of extremely smart people in Boston who favoured individual thinking and personal skills over capitalism and following the rules. Have you played it?

The laws that you are using now to make money from their and our work were once put in place to protect creative workers and those who invested in their endeavours to ensure that they get paid.
But your company never created anything. "Night Dive" is just a device to misuse the legal system and fill Stephen Kick's pockets.

Go get a real job, Larry. Do something that isn't just enough to pay the rent. Write. Draw. Create something. Be more than a leech.
And play System Shock.

Sincerely,
Nicolai "Kolya" Sandow
"""

Found that comment on the Steam forum here:
Link.

From what I've read the people who made System Shock Portable unfortunately didn't have the legal rights to distribute System Shock. If Night Dive has forced them to stop their distribution perhaps that means they've acquired the rights for it and we'll soon see it on GOG!

GOG Wishlist: System Shock

Nice. It's sad that this was "announced" via such a shitty rant, though. "Hey, we've been illegally distributing the game for free for years, how dare you get the rights to the game out of the clutches of the original assholes who somehow ended up with them and never made the game legally available to the public?"

I thought night dive were in financial trouble... or was that Bad juju

YES.

I have played only SSP since it's not available anywhere else.
It's amazing how this game was (and in some aspects still is) YEARS ahed of any other game of its time.

And I have a weak spot for good old midi music. Bring it on.

Why I would certainly be happy to have SS here, taking down SSP seems like a jerk move. As Kolya wrote: Many people have put a lot of work into preserving and improving the game. And while they didn't have the "legal" rights, they have been wilfully ignored for years - nobody can tell me that whoever held the rights (EA?) and cared about the game didn't know about SSP.

Even if Night Dive bought the rights, they should have turned a blind eye to the SSP community. Those people who actually care about a game as old as this will pay or not pay for it, regardless of SSP's availability.

Bad Juju.

Jerk move indeed, but when it comes to money the big guys do what they have to do. Nothing personal.

It's only a 'jerk move' if they don't do anything with it IMO.

Wasn't there a thread about it already? No. I'm sorry but SSP is distributing copyrighted material. As I said in the other thread, they do suggest making a package that install the mods on a clean SS installation, which they do encourage. That is not distributing copyrighted material, and it does give the SSP functionality to those that already have the game.

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145663 So a release is imminent :)

Has SSP been backed-up elsewhere then, like on TPB or Mega?

ah, ty

Well there are things like "customary right"... And they've been doing it for years, and out in the open too.
But in the end... What's happened happened. Let's hope for a mod-pack.
I guess since SSP is used by quite a number of people, it won't take long until "mirrors" pop up.

EVERYTHING is copyrighted material... my comment is copyrighted to me afterall :P

Seriously the copyright system needs a huge overhaul to fix these types of problems, and games that are long since considered abandoned (or too much legal crap to fix)...



Other problems to fix is like what Fox currently does to retain the rights to the fantastic 4, while not having a clue of what to do with them except throw out something just to satisfy some tiny requirement rather than return them to marvel (as one example).