It's apparent i don't have the full story here... I didn't know there was mods in question; But it's much more so about getting/keeping the game in a working state rather than being copyrighted material. If you fight and make a big deal to remove something, it lingers or becomes 100x more popular than if you just left it alone, which tends to just drift off and be forgotten about...

My personal opinion on the matter? If the game/franchise was abandoned for 10+ years then it's public domain... Same for software, OSes, books, etc.

SSP is System Shock with mouselook, higher textures and a few other modifications. Main thing is that it is the full game, with mods on it. ND recently got the rights to System Shock, so they asked the ttlg forums to stop hosting the current version of SSP, but they said that if they make a package that updates a vanilla installation of System Shock to the SSP one, they are fine with them offering said version for download.

I'm quite sure that with System Shock 2 ND has done more for GOG than GOG for ND. And surely ND have made far more money off the unnecessarily delayed Steam release. Obviously I do sympathize more with GOG than ND but pretending that ND owe anything to GOG is just wrong.

Sounds reasonable... I personally don't know any of the details.

But likely once you can't easily get it anywhere anymore, someone's going to put it up, probably for convenience sake depending on how much work there is to do. If the new one (technically vanilla) isn't compatible, i don't know. Sometimes entire engines are re-written from scratch (by fans sometimes) to work with different hardware.

Same here. I quit it after 2 hours. I didn't like the enemy respawn and I didn't have the time to understand its mechanics. The fact that I had other good games in my backlog didn't help either.

I might try it again, perhaps after I watch some guide video.

I'm just glad I'm not alone here, and kudos to all the folks who disagreed without being mean about it; this forum is peach of the gaming world.

Mostly, it's a little hard to get wrapped up in a game's atmosphere when I'm too busy worrying about my gun breaking. :P All the great things it has (which are many) are killed off my too many other distractions, like the aforementioned weapons and respawns.

Actually I have no problems with that if a) those are old games that are past their life cycle and generate no revenue for the original creators any more and b) they don't offer the actual GOG versions.

I buy old games here for the "no fuss: install and play" and for nicely OCR'd manuals and extras. I've re-bought quite a number of games that I already owned for this reason. So if someone was maintaining a site where their own version of, say, Pools of Radiance - regardless if bare floppy disk images or a ready-to-play DOSbox-wrapped version or a home-built native windows HD version with a nice installer - I wouldn't have a problem with that, provided they offered it for free. I gladly pay for GOG versions because I get something out of the work GOG staff has put into them. And I have the files hosted by them and there is continuing support (see: Windows 10 release...). So for me it's worth the money.
In the case of SSP that work (getting the game to run and even improving it) has been done for free already by some talented and enthusiastic people.

It may be though, (IANAL) that ND is required to take down SSP as it is, either by contracts or maybe in some countries there are laws that you "forfeit" your right if you don't enforce them. I don't deny that legally they are in the right - it just feels wrong to me.

From what I heard, the Galaxy code isn't up to snuff for what Night Dive needs to release Strife here. (I've encouraged them to release it Galaxy-free here, at least temporarily, but never really got a response.)

My personal opinion is that I should be allowed to murder people that really annoy me with no consequences.. shame the law doesn't agree with me.

I wouldn't necessarily say that. I like UW, but the controls in SS were way to clunky for me.

Legally,you are wrong.
Copyright applies regardless of whether a book is in print of not. To keep it in print of not is strictly a business decision ,has nothing to do with copyright rights. Same thing applies to Software. There is no such thing legally as Abadonware.
Galaxy is not up to snuff,period. Way too unstable.

What rtcvb32 is saying is not that absurd, actually.
I'm probably just stating the obvious, but in civil law systems (I have no idea if this exists also in common law ones) there is a method to gain ownership of something called "usucapion", directly descended from Roman law: if the legitimate owner does not use something for a certain amount of time -which varies based on the kind of good we are talking about and on the needs of society- the property passes to those who use it, regardless if they previously had right to do so or not.
It was created to avoid any kind of waste, mostly those concerning farming grounds, and I think it could benefit intellectual properties a lot if only it could be applied there.
Unfortunately, Capitalism in general strongly opposes the notion. Better to let something die than allow others to profit on it, a very healthy custom for sure. I think too many people see Law as perfect and infallible, while it always has huge gaps that a certain kind of people readily exploits -those regarding copyright being just an example. Imo, something unused (and thus bringing no advantage to anyone) is something someone else should get, to hell with property, and I would urge legislators to consider this more, if only I could -and provided they were willing, something I strongly doubt.

Edit: I forgot a verb! :P

I wasn't disagreeing with the notion, just the legality.

I feel that System Shock Portable is in the right. It has kept the original System Shock relevant, which has fostered a community that will say that the game is good. That will help System Shock garner many more sales when it is released in places like GOG and Steam.

As ever, I view copyright as a thing that should be used with care. It is a powerful tool that has the ability to damage or erase a product from existence. To my mind, it is about balancing culture with financial reality.

With any luck, Night Dive will adopt Kolya's service to officially recognize SSP as an improvement for System Shock.