tfishell: It does seem highly unlikely, but I've been "refreshed" by the positive input I've been getting from some rights holders, so I may go ahead and send him one just to be safe.
Piranjade: Same here. I received a VERY nice and long message from the guy who maintains the German Thalion fan site today.
Very cool! I assume it's different from the one Alex Holland is maintaining? *checks* okay, yeah, this a UK one:
http://thalion.exotica.org.uk/
Btw, got this email back from Alex: " Having talked to the Thalion developers many times over the years. They seem happy that their games are freely available (albeit not 100% legitimately) for fans through various websites.
Non of them has ever said they wanted to try to resell their original games. Not even when the various App Stores for mobile platforms appeared (unlike many games companies which are reselling their games in this space).
But then again they don't own their games.
While I am very curious to know who owns the rights today, if we did find them and they agreed to license their binaries to GOG, non of the profit would find it's way back to the Thalion developers.
Plus it is very likely that they would pursue those like myself who are currently publishing the binaries without a license.
I don't see it as a win for any gamer.
P.S. The DOS versions of Thalion games are pretty poor. Dragonflight has many bugs in it. Amberstar is better but far worse in quality than the Amiga or Atari versions
" This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but as GOG fans of course we find it frustrating.
jonwil: Its great to see so much work going on in identifying the rights holders for these games.
Just remember to factor in any potential 3rd party IP though (for example someone mentioned Micro Machines. Getting that on GOG would mean negotiating with the holder of the rights to the game AND the holder of the rights to the toys (and possibly also with whoever has the current license for making games based on the toys, whoever that might be)
Also consider games that are already available through other digital platforms (Command & Conquer for example is available through the EA Origin service and they are unlikely to let GOG have it for that reason)
In terms of games worth chasing up the rights to, another game I would really like to see on GOG (and may have mentioned in the past) is the excellent game Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic. Wikipedia says the publisher was Electronic Arts so hopefully that would mean confirming the actual rights holder should be fairly simple.
Also, to the guy who mentioned Neuromancer, there's a video game based on one of my favorite books of all time and I didn't know about it... Definitely something I want to see on GOG (assuming that any negotiations that would need to happen with William Gibson can be sorted out)
Yes, good point. My main hope for "3rd Party IP" is GOG getting the D&D license for SSI's Gold Box games.
I'm not always able to factor this in as I'm just going off what Abandonia says, and unless it has a tag like "Dungeons and Dragons series" or it's obvious in the title like "Lord of the Rings", I won't necessarily know for sure whether there are those extra complications or not. But ultimately GOG can figure it out for sure.