It's cool. I heard back from the Harvester person that works the page (don't know if I've already posted this):

"I know plenty of people (including the director/writer Gilbert Austin) who were making Harvester but none of them have any idea about who or what owns the copyright. Harvester was designed by DigiFX Interactive and published by Merit Studios, and both companies went down after Harvester was released.

The clue I got for you is Lee Jacobson. He was the producer of Harvester and he also owned the company which created the game. I have not been in contact with Lee but I suggest that you'll get in touch with him.

Here is a link to Lee's FB profile (and also link to Harvester's trademark info, if it's any help).

I wish you'll keep me updated about your search for game rights. It's a very interesting issue and you are not the first one who is searching for it.

Good luck! --Aarno Malin"

I sent a Facebook message to Lee Jacobson, but haven't heard back (as has been the case with many other people, sadly). If you want me to PM you his Facebook page, I can.

I also sent a message to the company where he works, http://www.apmetrix.com/ at info@apmetrix.com. I got an "I'll pass this on... - Apmetrix Support " from the support people, but haven't heard back from him here, either.

So for right now, I'm not entirely sure what to do, unfortunately.

-----------------------------------------------------

Regarding Rage of Mages, I heard this back from Nival: "Right to Allods universe (which includes Rage of Mages) are now owned by Mail.ru" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail.Ru

So we would need a Russian speaker to contact them, it seems. (Unfortunately, they seem pretty darn big, so I'm not sure if they'd respond or not.)

-----------------------------------------------------

Also, doing some research on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datasoft, I found this: "The company went into bankruptcy and its name and assets were purchased by two Datasoft executives, Samuel L. Poole and Ted Hoffman. They renamed the company IntelliCreations which distributed Datasoft games until it closed."

Ted Hofmann's profile is here: www.linkedin.com/pub/ted-hofmann/1a/382/886
I believe he is currently working here - http://www.cfoplus.net/faq.html - so I plan on sending an email soon.

EDIT: Bah, the email is buggered. I went ahead and sent him a LinkedIn message via connection, so possibly not the best/most professional thing to do, but I took a chance.

Yes, let me know if you want me to follow up via LinkedIn and I'll give it a go. Hopefully I can play up my game developer side in a flattering message. :D

I'm not sure about that, as a direct visit to v3-ent.com yields quite dubious results. It may have to be LinkedIn, though if his company website is dead, it's possible he doesn't check in on LinkedIn anymore either, given that his profile still lists that company.

Thanks for all the help Piranjade, I appreciate your skills at turning up further clues!

Thanks! Really hope some of those contacts will give us some new info \ leads!

Some more potential freeware games are:
Aleshar - Released as freeware by the authors in July 2000.
Amulets and Armor
Assault Trooper
Boppin'
[url=http://web.archive.org/web/20050212050008/www.orcsoftware.com/~ronny/index.html]Cyberdogs and C-Dogs[/url]
Electro Man
Empire
Sango Fighter
Super Fighter
Xargon
In fact, the publisher behind Sango Fighter, Super Fighter Team, have some old games that they can apparently bring to GOG, the RPG Trifecta Pack (Beggar Prince, Legend of Wukong, and Star Odyssey), and they sell Keen Dreams for Android.

Some more leads to look into:
- I want to find out what became of Capstone's games. They ought to be linked to the fate of their holding company, IntraCorp Entertainment, Inc.
using a google search of site:linkedin.com "IntraCorp Entertainment" lead me to several people, the one I presume to be most in the know of them would be the accountant, Evert De Kok
http://www.linkedin.com/in/evertdekok
Haven't contacted him yet.

- Looking into the rights to the game SpellCraft: Aspects of Valor on MobyGames, it says that the publisher is still around and now known as Agetec, Inc. I've contacted them via their site form.

- According to MobyGames, London-based Millennium Interactive was folded into Sony and is now Guerilla-Cambridge. I've sent an inquiry to their sister site.

- I've sent Tony Kavanagh, formerly of Krisalis Software, an email about the rights to Krisalis games such as Sabre Team and Legends.

- Asked Data Design Inc., who apparently are still around, about the rights to Conquest Earth and X-It, though Conquest Earth may be held by Eidos.

- Asked Talin about Faery Tale Adventure 1 + 2. I've seen a recent interview with him where he expressed interest in making Faery Tale Adventure 3, so it may be that he still has the rights. The problem is, I don't know if that viridia website e-mail link is being checked anymore.

- I'd like to see the Strike series (Jungle Strike, Desert Strike, Nuclear Strike, etc.) on GOG, and I'm fairly confident EA has the rights. I'll eventually try their forums.

- Sent an inquiry to Mark Giambruno about Mechadeus' games Critical Path and The Daedalus Encounter.

- Asked XS Games if they had the rights to any other Dreamforge Intertainment titles.

- Holistic Design appears to be still active, and that could mean that they have the rights to:
Emperor of the Fading Suns
Hammer of the Gods
Mall Tycoon
Machiavelli The Prince
Battles of Destiny
http://www.holistic-design.com/?page_id=103
I've sent them an inquiry at the address listed on that page.

- Sent an inquiry to Digital Reality asking if they have the rights to the game Reunion. I have a good feeling they do, considering the captcha required me to correctly choose the cover art of Reunion from a selection of cover pictures!

- Igor Karev mentions in this interview, from what I understand from the machine translation, that they have the rights to Chasm: The Rift, but they don't want to bring it to GOG because of bad memories of the publisher? Or he thinks it will sell too poorly? If there's someone out there who understands Russian, can you properly interpret what he said?
http://avegamers.com/blog/special/action-forms-intervyu-s-igorem-karevym-chast-1-istoricheskaya

And off-topic, but how do you embed YouTube videos in the Wishlist? I didn't think it was possible, but:
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/wheelman

...Eh? What? Huh?

I want to be careful about what I past from this email, but here's this:

"I didn't realise that GOG was a commercial site. I should have visited it first before replying. I had assumed that you were a free, enthusiast website like myself.

I am not going to be able to provide any more help.

Sorry."

I still don't understand what the objection is... Is he against selling the games legimately as opposed to piracy?

Something like that, it appears. The games are available for "free" on his fan page, and he admits it's illegal, but nobody has complained yet. I think he wants to keep them free for everyone.

Yay. How very thoughtful of him.

It's already here! YAY!

Looks like you have to be a flattering game developer on LinkedIn. I called Bigpoint today, and apparently Mr. Beyreuther is not working there anymore. :-(
Of course that doesn't mean that Bigpoint does not have the rights to Project Nomads.

I found this:
http://www.xing.com/profile/Bernd_Beyreuther
but I don't have a Xing profile.

Ah, thanks for the update. I'll see if I can draft a not-creepy request for contact. I'm hoping the rights reside with the creators rather than Bigpoint, as he might be easier to negotiate with. I'll let you know how it goes.

EDIT: Sent the request to connect. I dislike that I had to send the request as a Friend, that is terribly presumptuous in my estimation, but LinkedIn offers few other options in that regard. Here is the message I sent, we'll see if he responds.

--------------------

Hello Mr. Beyreuther,

I am a game researcher who would like to talk to you about Project Nomads. I will not bother you with technical questions or marketing pitches, just some basic questions about who now holds the rights to it and such.

Thank you.

--------------------

He has a Twitter account if someone wants to contact him that way. I don't use that personally.

I'm going to basically recycle my message and try to reach Van Collins on LinkedIn the same way.

Thank you!
I had a friend sent me a screenshot of his Xing profile and apparently he's still working for Bigpoint despite what the woman on the phone claimed. He just switched positions.

And I don't have a twitter account either.

Great, good to know. We may be able to reach him there after all if LinkedIn doesn't come through.

SCPM mentioned using Twitter, and perhaps some other folks in this thread do as well, so they may be able to get in touch with him that way.

I got an answer from Computec. They don't have the rights to Amberstar or Dragonflight from Thalion.
I haven't received an answer from the German Thalion fan site yet.

EDIT: According to this screenshot of the Amberstar credits, they guy we're looking for is called Karsten Köper (=Karsten Koeper)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Trilogy
His last known work place was Similis Software, but they don't exist anymore.
And we're not the only ones looking for him.
There is a gmx email address mentioned here but that was more than 10 years ago and I don't think it's still working.

He worked for BlueByte for a time but I think that was before Similis.

EDIT 2:
Here is a Thalion reunion video. And one of them commented on it. I don't think you can send messages on youtube to other youtube users, right?