Been looking into Cyberdreams lately. Pat Ketchum sold all of his shares of the company to his partner in 1995 and now does photography:
http://www.ketchumphotography.com/about_me.html
I believe the person he is referring to is Cyberdreams' owner Rolf Klug. In 1997, Cyberdreams was closed and Rolf Klug worked for another company until 2005 when he moved to Germany and is now a board memeber of Gauselmann Group. He has a LinkedIn account, so anyone on LinkedIn can reach him here:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rolf-klug/8/2a7/5
He may still have the rights to the Dark Seed games and other Cyberdreams properties.
Edit: Thanks to verify-email.org, I've guessed his e-mail address and sent him a message, so we'll see what he says. :)

Nice! I'll send a message via LinkedIn, too. Here's is what I received from Elizabeth Olson:

"Others have reached out to myself, David Mullich, Jamie Ottilie others that were involved with these titles at Cyberdreams in the hopes of resurrecting these titles. To date, we have only encountered dead ends. The company, which was owned by a German gentlemen (Rolf - his last name escapes me) who mostly lived offshore, was indeed dissolved and he is, to my knowledge unreachable. He had continued to back the company only long enough to recoup losses experienced earlier in its history (when it was affiliated with Don Bluth) and then shut it down. This was all done under the leadership of his financial adviser and final Cyberdreams CEO, Paul Licari, who moved back east and 'retired' from entertainment IP. Last I was able to track Paul down, he was running a historic restaurant in Boston, but did not return calls/emails sent by myself/David/Jamie.

I suspect your best bet would be if there was a statute of limitations on Cyberdreams' interactive rights to the properties (I am unclear on this). In the case of "I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream", Harlan Ellison may know and would be the best place to start. However, I warn you that he is not the easiest person to work with and his price may be quite expensive. Also, keep in mind that David Sears, the 'co-writer' of the IHNMAIMS game, may retain some rights to the game design itself. I had dinner with David on Monday at PAX. He is currently living in North Carolina and running a studio called SOF Studios (Special Operations Forces), doing a project called H-Hour: World's Elite (the spiritual successor to the earlier SOCOM games), and he is buried in work at the moment. I'm not even sure where to begin on the DarkSeed stuff."

If we're able to reach Rolf, he may be the key to Darkseed and other Cyberdreams games. EDIT: I guess CyberRace is the only other Cyberdreams game. :P

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Heart of Darkness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness_%28video_game%29

I wonder if this hasn't appeared because of compatibility issues, or because GOG would have to bring together Infogrames/Atari and Interplay for a worldwide release for some reason.

Since Eric Chahi worked on the game, I figured I'd see if the person running http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=/search%3Fq%3Deric%2BChahi%26safe%3Doff%26biw%3D1125%26bih%3D621&sl=fr&u=http://www.anotherworld.fr/&sandbox=0&usg=ALkJrhgmVDkMguy5PIdR6ocUyWE3Sh1Y2Q might be able to send him my email, however incredibly unlikely that may be. Worth a shot.

This game does have some serious compatibility issues. =\ Eric Chahi does have a LinkedIn account, but the personal e-mail given at anotherworld.fr is dead. You can try sending him a simple message in English anyhow:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eric-chahi/10/a52/71b
He's currently working for a company that's impossible to search for: °0°
He co-produced the game with 4 other people (one of them now deceased), but Eric would still be the first person to go after.

Yeah, after posting I got a bad response. XP I'll try sending him a LinkedIn message, thanks.

I was doing research on Reunion (another Merit Studios-published game, like Harvester) and came across

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunion_%28video_game%29#Other_games_from_the_developers and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperium_Galactica. We have Haegemonia here (a la Anumen), but we don't have any GT Interactive games, do we? Maybe there are some complications and it's not as simple as GT > Infogrames > Atari. Imperium 1 is simply DOS, so that shouldn't have any compatibility issues, and apparently Imperium 2 was re-released for iPad.

http://www.digitalreality.eu/games/itemlist/ shows Imperium 1 & 2, Reunion, and various other information on their games, but I guess one cannot purchase them through here. I'll send an email (I can't remember if I've tried to contact them or not) and see what's up.

I sent them a message via their contact page on August 11 but never got a response.
http://www.digitalreality.eu/contact?view=contact
If you found a direct e-mail, it'll be better to use that.

I tweeted them just now - https://twitter.com/DR_Games (making sure to tag GOG so GOG hopefully takes notice) It looks like they're releasing a new IG game, so I'd assume they have the trademark currently. Apparently I also made a Facebook post at one point - https://www.facebook.com/DigitalRealityGames/posts/10201008461466023.
Maybe I'll send a Facebook message, although I doubt it will pan out.

EDIT: This is why I have to be careful about doing this game research, I get caught up and can't easily pull myself away. :P

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Flush of madness regarding Harvester, Merit Studios, and Lee Jacobson. Maybe it leads somewhere, maybe not. In the Reddit thread for the IHNO GOG release, I believe Night Dive made a post about trying to get Harvester. I gave them what info I had via a Facebook message, assuming they have much more "pull" than I do.

SCPM may have already beat me to this (sorry, I don't want to look through 20 pages of this thread ;), but anyway...

Found the Call of Cthulu classics on the wishlist, did a little research on the rights - http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_H._P._Lovecraft.

"Chaosium, publishers of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, have a trademark on several Lovecraftian phrases and creations, including "The Call of Cthulhu", for use in game products."

http://www.chaosium.com/

I emailed the Chaosium staff asking if they hold the "Call of Cthulu" trademark, and if so if they might be willing to negociate with Infogrames/Atari and GOG for re-releases here.

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I assume that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_of_the_Coast holds the rights to Advanced D&D. They are a subsidiary of Hasbro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Simulations,_Inc. - makers of the Advanced D&D DOS games, was acquired by Ubisoft.

So basically, GOG would have to bring together Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro and Ubisoft for the SSi D&D games to be re-released, correct? I'm sure it's more complex than that, but is that the idea in a nutshell?

As I think more about this, it really depends on the nature of the contracts signed between the parties when the games were created. If there was some kind of in perpetuity clause, stating that the game producer could continue to sell the game as long as they wanted, then no renegotiation may be needed. But if the license only covered a time frame, then it becomes more complex. I suspect that the earlier games, such as the SSI titles, may not be as much of a problem, because people then were a lot less fanatical about controlling every part of their IP for all time, and therefore it is more likely that the contract terms were generous. Hell, TSR may not have expected the games to generate any interest after about 5 years, and thus have done nothing to introduce an artificial expiration in the contract.

Interesting. I sent TurnipSlayerr a message about this, hoping maybe he could give us a hint as to whether we should not bother researching this anymore or not, without divulging important info.

If you think about it, we have other D&D games here a la Hasbro, so I wonder if Hasbro is another party that would have to be involved?

EDIT: I had zeroed in on the Gold Box games, forgetting probably the #1 old-school D&D game series GOG should get: Eye of the Beholder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_the_Beholder_%28video_game%29

It was developed by Westwood/EA but published by SSI/Ubisoft (at least the DOS version), with a D&D license from TSR/Wizards of the Coast. I wonder how Hasbro fits in here: http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/178113-comic-con-hasbro-announces-dungeons-a-dragons-kre-o-sets

I'm not sure what's holding back http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/empires_dawn_of_the_modern_world.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empires:_Dawn_of_the_Modern_World]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empires:_Dawn_of_the_Modern_World[/url]

I just came across it on the wishlist, and at 2000+ votes, and assuming Activision still retains the rights (we have Empire Earth here a la Sierra/Activision, and Dawn of the Modern World is part of that series), I'd think it wouldn't be too problematic to make an appearance.

Maybe the problem is with compatibility? It is 3D, but I thought by 2003 programmers and developers were weren't using coding "hacks" or whatever that GOG claims can make games difficult to run on new machines, and that backwards compatibility was being considered.

Maybe GOG could have made a deal for this as part of a Activision batch when they acquired Soldier of Fortune (assuming that is the action game of gore we'll be getting).

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_%281998_video_game%29#Releases

"In July of 2013, it was announced that Rebellion bought the rights to Battlezone from Atari."

I tweeted Rebellion, suggesting Battlezone 1 & 2 re-releases on GOG if they could be made to run on modern machines. https://twitter.com/rebellion

Abandonia says on their page, "To play the game, download the Battlezone 1998 all-in-one installer, which is fully patched and updated. It includes Activison's Battlezone, the official Red Odyssey add-on pack, the best maps from the Battlegrounds official map pack, and many more extras." They actually link to http://www.labelgames.com/Item/id223.html

Whatever the case, it's worth a shot.

I sent a message and tweet to http://throwbackentertainment.com/ about possible PC versions of Acclaim games that could be re-released on GOG, since "In 2006, Throwback Entertainment, a video game company that had once considered acquiring Acclaim Entertainment, announced that it had purchased more than 50 of Acclaim's games, and vowed to bring such titles as Re-Volt, Extreme-G, Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, Vexx, Fur Fighters and many other franchises into the next generation and beyond."

Good stuff. Sorry you couldn't make contact, hopefully these will still show up eventually.

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Although it's not something probably worth investigating due to legal complications, I started a thread about the possibility of re-releasing The Wheel of Time PC game on GOG: http://www.dragonmount.com/forums/topic/84601-might-a-re-release-of-the-wheel-of-time-pc-game-on-gogcom-be-possible/

I'm hoping the fact that the game was published by GT Interactive/Infogrames/Atari might make a re-release a little easier, if the WoT copyright holders can be convinced. I'm going to send an email to Brandon Sanderson (who went on writing WoT books after Robert Jordan/James Oliver Rigney passed away) to see if he has any ideas. http://brandonsanderson.com/contact/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jordan#The_Wheel_of_Time:
"On December 7, 2007, Tor Books announced that Brandon Sanderson had been chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series. Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow, chose him after reading Mistborn: The Final Empire."

Perhaps Tor Books would have to be convinced?

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/sid_meiers_gettysburg

Assuming that (like with Alpha Centauri) Firaxis Games published by EA can appear here pretty easily, I'm guessing we can get Sid Meier's Gettysburg! and Antietam! without legal troubles. Maybe a 9.99 bundle or 5.99 for each.

"In 1998, Gettysburg won the Origins Award for Best Strategy Computer Game of 1997."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Gettysburg!

But these are '90s Windows games, not DOS titles, so maybe compatibility is also holding these back.

Good news! I'm not comfortable sharing all of it, but here's this:

I was able to get in touch with Nicolas Gaume (via LinkedIn, I think; can't quite remember). He sent me this email about Fury of the Furries:

"Hi Tyler,

Thanks for your contact and interest in our Kalisto games.

We are actually producing a new version of Furry of the Furries for iOS & Android.

Tell me more about what you do and what were your thoughts on this particular project! You never know, maybe ways to work together on all this.

Cheers,
Nicolas"

I explained in more detail about GOG, and provided some contact info.