Well, Atari is not exactly dead, it got bought by Infogrames so it is actually Infogrames which is taking games away from us now.
But you wouldn't know it because Infogrames decided to take the name of its new subsidiary and so renamed itself Atari so now you just read Atari and you are not supposed to know that it is actually Infogrames under the name Atari if you didn't study Atari's history.
So each time that you read Atari now, it is not really Atari anymore, it is actually Infogrames.

Oooh boy.I actually thought that Infogrames was shutdown and turned into Atari SA,but i guess i was wrong.But this time,it ain't Atari/Infogrames that is pulling the game down,but actually it's the Riddick licence which is due to expire and the guys won't renew it for x reasons.... As some of you have posted above,we can only hope that a new Riddick movie comes along and then a new game gets made which would allow these games to be sold again.But let's not hold our breath guys :D.Cheers

It was the contrary. It is Infogrames who bought Atari and took its name for itself. :-3

I am waiting for Riddick 4, not because of a game but because I want to watch Riddick discovering Furya at last!
Also, I want to see what will happen now that Vako has reach Anteverse.
I also want to see what will happen with the Necromongers. Will Riddick become their leader again? Will Vako claim the throne now that he is overpowered? Will the Necromongers follow Riddick? Will they betray him?
I am waiting for the next Riddick movie to get answers to all these questions.
Because I like The Chronicles of Riddick movies, I think Riddick is the best role played by Vin Diesel ever and I want to watch him play it again.
I also like Karl Urban and I want to see him again as well.
And beside that, I think that The Chronicles of Riddick is a nice sci-fi saga.
And I never played a Riddick game so my love of this saga is all about movies.
I was planning to buy The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay/Assault on Dark Athena bundle and play these games someday but now I can no more.
And even if I read this post before it got removed, I wouldn't have bought it because I buy when I want, I don't buy under pressure.
If a day comes when I will be dying to play these games and if at this day, they are not available DRM-free in stores, then I will just get them by other ways.
It might be disapproved by laws but if it is not available to buy, then we can't buy so it will not be a loss to developers anyway.
The bad thing is to not buy when it is available to buy because you prevent developers to earn their living.
But if it is not available to buy, then you can't make developers earn your money anyway so that will not change anything for them if you get it without rewarding them.
If you can, just give them a donation to support them. ;-)

I understand the emotions behind that, and I can agree with the desired sentiment and intention. On the real world side of things though it is quite unrealistic for many reasons. One is that publishers themselves would never agree to such perpetual license terms with non-termination status and lack of negotiability. Why would any publisher want to essentially sign away their ownership of a game to one single store that makes up the smallest percentage of their customer base, and at terms less favourable and flexible to them as other much more popular retail distribution platforms? They'd never do that.

But this assumes that the publisher alone solely can decide this, which isn't the case for a great many games, and the Riddick games would be one of them. The Riddick intellectual property isn't owned by the publisher but licensed, and thus is subject to the terms and conditions of the licensing agreement they signed to be able to produce the game in the first place. If they did not receive perpetual rights to produce and market a game with the Riddick character, branding and assets, then they don't have the legal authority to offer such a perpetual license to GOG or any other store to sell the game perpetually either.

They would have to pay a significantly higher licensing fee to have permanent irrevocable license rights to Riddick (or whatever 3rd party IP) to produce and sell the games based on that IP forever. No studio in their right mind would consider doing that as a business because it would give them greater expenditure and higher risks for no tangible increase in profits for doing so, especially if the given game turned out to be a flop. This assumes that the 3rd party IP holder would even consider a permanent irrevocable licencing deal to a game publisher to begin with.

Sure, it sucks when a game is taken off market like this. It was sad for me when Battle for Middle Earth 2 was shut down for example, but we all know or should know going in that video games made with 3rd party IP in them are practically by definition going to have short life spans due to how the licensing models work. There are some notable exceptions to this such as the Star Wars franchise, but the conditions under which those games persist on the market don't apply to most games, in that the owner of the underlying franchise IP itself controls the games - namely Disney for Star Wars presently.

So yeah, I echo the "it sucks" and "I wish it was like XYZ", but this is just how it is, and the alternative is these games never being created in the first place. Or if they are - a GOG policy requiring permanent sales rights to a given game would be a 100% guarantee that such games would never ever come to GOG in the first place because no publisher would accept such terms even if they legally could, and most publishers legally wouldn't be able to because it isn't their IP nor in their own licensing deals - they expire.

I know that. I just wish I lived in a world where games are not taken away.
I am so mad that Descent, Descent 2, Descent 3, Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition, XIII, The Chronicles of Riddick have been taken away from GOG!
I hate Interplay who have not paid due royalties to Parralax Software, I hate Gearbox Software who have bought Duke Nukem's intellectual property and who have taken away Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition from all stores just for forcing customers to buy their Duke Nukem 3D 20th Anniversary World Tour with DRM on Steam, I hate Ubisoft and I hate Atari (Infogrames)!
Because it is not because Atari is no more allowed to distribute Riddick that it was taken away from GOG.
Look, they still are selling it: https://atari.com/buy-games/action/chronicles-riddick-assault-dark-athena

And read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infogrames#Transition_from_Infogrames_Entertainment
As I said, Infogrames was owning Atari and decided to use its name which was much more recognizable.
So Infogrames took the name of its subsidiary Atari and now uses it for itself.
So now, each time that you read Atari, it is actually Infogrames behind.
So as I said, it is Infogrames who took away Riddick from us.
And as I also said, it is not because they are no more allowed to distribute it because they still are selling it on their own website.
I guess that they just wanted to make people go to their website to buy it so they can see all of the many other awesome Atari games available there.

And about XIII, I couldn't find it in any store and I couldn't find any explanation to why.
So if anyone knows the answer, knows why XIII was taken away, I would like to know the reason.

AAAArgh!

Escape from Butcher's Bay (included in Dark Athena) is really really worth. Everybody get it while they still can!

while most publishers and companies completely agree about such perpetual licensing on our content and personal datas :)

And with our explicit approval after being presented with terms of service agreements and privacy agreements that we click "I agree" to in order to grant them with that. Not that that's relevant to the topic at hand mind you. :)

It's a great system -- for them.

Something else did get removed.
Access to the files via the gog downloader.

https://www.gog.com/forum/chronicles_of_riddick_the/no_support_for_the_gog_downloader/page1

Any good reasons for this gog bears?

well not completely relevant but as EA and Ubisoft both are publisher and have their own DRM/Onlune store and service for gamaing, i genuinely thought it was a bit relevant

and you said "with explicit consent", it's not entirely true
i'm here speaking as someone who had purchased some physical copies of games from EA (bioware more precisely) who once received an email that my bioware account would be forcedly turned into an Origin account and that if i didnt agree, i'd loose my games, their collector edition bonuses and dlcs...
tlak about "choice" and consent there ?

by the time of the purchase, there were no mention of what awaited me in the future, so i gave my consent without being provided crucial informations

so, yes, why publishers wouldnt be tied by some similar terms to us customers (or to gog)

In fact in an "ideal world" (this is the minute of naiveté, forgive me for that) customers too would have rights, and i mean "hardcoded" ones - can't find an appropriate word to tell "they can't moditif such term at whim - to prevent some abuse.

If you review your original agreement that you agreed to, as most such agreements in the industry state in writing - the company in question (including GOG for that matter) reserves the right to change the terms and conditions in the future. Usually, one's continued use of the product/website/etc. is their explicit approval for the changes to the agreements.

One could argue quite reasonably that open-ended agreements such as these are unfair or any other number of adjectives. While I couldn't disagree with such sentiment, nobody is ever forced at gunpoint to go ahead and actually agree to such terms in the first place. If someone doesn't like such terms (and I'm included in that), and goes ahead and agrees to the terms anyway and they change, then yes - we did give our explicit approval that it is ok for them to do that.

The sad thing is though, that you'd be hard pressed to find any websites or software licensing agreements these days that do not contain such "we can change the agreement after the fact" clauses.

So while I'm with your mindset in spirit, if you read every word of the agreements in question to the letter of the law, in probably every single case, the legal wording is such that - yes - you/we did agree to it. It might be worded in such a way that we don't even understand what we're agreeing to also. But ultimately almost nobody ever even reads such agreements nor tries to understand them anyway as they're lengthy legalese and boring.

At the end of the day, humans tend to just agree to whatever without reading it because they want the damn thing that they want. Only when something happens after the fact that they don't like do they tend to care about agreements and legal mumbo jumbo, and often then by misinterpreting what is actually said to be in line with how they want it to be interpreted. :P

If we're being honest, most of us are guilty as charged on that front. :)

i see the point, dont mistake me
but what is the use for us to ever "read" anything before consent, as they already brought in a term that allow for any unilateral change at whim
i do usually read the tos and stuff like that, only to realise it's a blank bill, they could as well say "you agree to anything we want and to give up any right from your side", would be simplier, would roughly be no different

oh... wait... sometimes (and i stress on the word "sometimes") and "in theory" (same stress) terms of a contract may conflict with customer's domestic laws :) (but i know any case like that need to go in court, lasts several years and such... sometime though there is a minor breakthrough in customer's favor)

while i completely understand what you are saying and your point, i also say it's not a reason to give up, and maybe (i mean "maybe") something we, as citizen, have to bring our representatives's attention about (dont mock me, i dont mean "video games" TOS specifically, but overall customer's rights in digital goods era and in a worldwide context... if no one never say anything, sure things wont change, or if it does, it will be for the worse though i have hard time figuring out how worse it could become compared to nowadays)

Here we recently (past 2 or 3 years) managed to achieve significant breakthroughs/progress (and surprising) against big companies (like FB and such) regarding abusive terms or bringing back the liability to domestic laws and courts (those whom the customer depend on). it's slow, it's painful, it's not much of an improvement... but the turtle walks at least

Legalese -- by intention -- is very difficult to understand for those who're untrained. Additionally, people have been socialized to have an undue appreciation for "convenience", and have little tolerance for that which is inconvenient.

That said, asking someone to agree to something that you know they are unlikely to understand is downright despicable, and it's a shame that so few of us are willing to speak plainly on the matter.

Well put on all counts. I couldn't agree more.