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Join the eight-year-old genius by the name of Billy Blaze who learns that the Earth is in danger! Commander Keen Complete Pack, a set of 5 classic side-scrolling platform games, is now available on GOG.COM. Watch as Billy dons his brother's football helmet and his homemade interstellar spaceship to become Commander Keen – Defender of the Earth!

Until 17th February 2021, 2 PM UTC, Commander Keen Complete Pack will be available on GOG.COM 70% off!

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TheBigCore: Keen 6 is Atari's right now.

Not sure about Keen Dreams, but its source code was open sourced.
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gibbeynator: If the Switch version is anything to go by, Keen Dreams should belong to the Keen Company.
Here's the situation as it is now
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Prah: So to clarify why two games are missing. idSoftware simply doesn't have the rights to publish them.

Keen Dreams is currently owned by an actual idiot who bought the rights of the game for $1500 from Flat Rock Software, who owned SoftDisk (the publisher of this episode, it was not published by Apogee like the other episodes).

Aliens Ate My Babysitter was published by FormGen, so not Apogee either. FormGen was later bought by GT Interactive, which in turn was acquired by Infogrames eventually transformed into today's Atari Inc. which is a subsidary to the french company Atari SA. So the rights for publishing that episode probably lies with them.
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TheBigCore: Keen 6 is Atari's right now.

Not sure about Keen Dreams, but its source code was open sourced.
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Prah:
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gibbeynator: If the Switch version is anything to go by, Keen Dreams should belong to the Keen Company.
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Prah: Here's the situation as it is now
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Prah: So to clarify why two games are missing. idSoftware simply doesn't have the rights to publish them.

Keen Dreams is currently owned by an actual idiot who bought the rights of the game for $1500 from Flat Rock Software, who owned SoftDisk (the publisher of this episode, it was not published by Apogee like the other episodes).

Aliens Ate My Babysitter was published by FormGen, so not Apogee either. FormGen was later bought by GT Interactive, which in turn was acquired by Infogrames eventually transformed into today's Atari Inc. which is a subsidary to the french company Atari SA. So the rights for publishing that episode probably lies with them.
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Prah:
I wonder if there's direct contact information for Atari so that everyone can keep asking for them to put Keen 6 on GOG.
Of course, I'm happy with the fact that Commander Keen finally joined the GOG's offer, it's still holding really good (played a lot in it in previous year), but that artwork... Ugh. Reminds me one of those extremely weird artworks with megaman, created at the beginning of the franchise, IIRC.
Post edited February 11, 2021 by MartiusR
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TheBigCore: I wonder if there's direct contact information for Atari so that everyone can keep asking for them to put Keen 6 on GOG.
There you go: https://www.atari.com/contact-support/
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Prah: Keen Dreams is currently owned by an actual idiot who bought the rights of the game for $1500 from Flat Rock Software, who owned SoftDisk (the publisher of this episode, it was not published by Apogee like the other episodes).
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my name is sadde catte: Ho-ly crap.
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PassiveZombie: Okay. Yeah, I likely misunderstood, then.

Would that individual receive royalties? (curious)
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my name is sadde catte: No, the person in question only owns Keen Dreams, which is one of the games missing from this collection.
Understood. Thank you for clarifying. :)
Post edited February 11, 2021 by PassiveZombie
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HunchBluntley: JMich stopped posting his yearly stats on "old" game releases (or anything else) a few years ago, and while I tracked it for a while myself, I also stopped caring enough to do so after a while; however, I still get the impression that the number of such releases on GOG hasn't changed significantly since the old days.
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eiii: The last time I was looking at MaGog's release statistics it was telling something different. Unfortunately it's not available anymore.
It also depends on how a given individual decides to define "old", of course (which is why I typed it like that). When it comes to video games, I figure "around a decade old, or older" is as good a definition as any. ;)
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HunchBluntley: It also depends on how a given individual decides to define "old", of course (which is why I typed it like that). When it comes to video games, I figure "around a decade old, or older" is as good a definition as any. ;)
I think that also has been the definition which was used by MaGog, 10 years or older at GOG release time.
As others have said already, it'd be nice if this also included "Aliens ate my Babysitter". This is the same "complete pack" that's been available over on Steam for years.

Still bought, because I prefer my games in GOG. Hopefully GOG isn't stopping here, and tracks down and works with whoever holds the rights to "Babysitter" these days (guessing Atari, or whoever holds the old FormGen stuff).
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HunchBluntley: It also depends on how a given individual decides to define "old", of course (which is why I typed it like that). When it comes to video games, I figure "around a decade old, or older" is as good a definition as any. ;)
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eiii: I think that also has been the definition which was used by MaGog, 10 years or older at GOG release time.
Going solely by MaGog's reckoning is inevitably going to be somewhat misleading, as I'm pretty sure it just looked at whatever GOG/the publisher put as the release date and compared that to the GOG release date. But a fair number of remasters and ports don't use the release date of the original version, but of that new remaster or PC port. In such a case, if the game was released day one here -- or even within a few years -- MaGog wouldn't count it for this statistic.

Unfortunately, to get the most accurate impression of this, one would have to check all new releases and do some off-site research on a fair number of them (source: I did just that for more than a year). Even then, there are going to be lots of "asterisks" -- see this old post for examples. (Yes, that list used "pre-2010" as its prerequisite for inclusion, rather than "at least 10 years old upon GOG release". I was trying to keep it at least somewhat simple for myself, okay? :P )

Again, I'm not even saying that releases of old games haven't declined; I'm saying that one or two years of slight decline doesn't matter that much, especially if that's following a year or two where there was actually a noticeable increase in such releases compared to the year or two prior to that (which happened in 2015, IIRC). There are always peaks and valleys in such things.
By the way, GOG uses part of this image for the Commander Keen Complete Pack, despite Babysitter not being in the pack itself:

https://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/4346-commander-keen-aliens-ate-my-babysitter-dos-front-cover.jpg

Hopefully, Atari and Microsoft / Bethesda will get Keen 6 on GOG some day.
Post edited February 11, 2021 by TheBigCore
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Wottie: I wonder how many game compilations called "Complete Pack", "Ultimate Edition", etc. actually do provide the complete series. Judging by my experience from the other platform, I'd estimate it at about 30% at the max.
The one I owned that comes to mind was the Leisure Suit Larry Collection released by Sierra in the 90s. Heavy-duty glossy box, a bound book, plus all the Larry Games including two versions of Leisure Suit Larry 1 and 6. I felt like I got my money's worth.

Keeping relevant to iD software and Keen, the id Anthology collection sounded amazing. All of Id's games, including the seven Keen games. Rights issues may not have been as complex then or publishers may not have cared as much.
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seinmind: All of Id's games, including the seven Keen games. Rights issues may not have been as complex then or publishers may not have cared as much.
I think id Software paid good money to Apogee (them personally I'm not sure), FormGen and Softdisk, even Interplay. Publishers always cared about their rights, especially in the US, especially after CDs replaced floppies. But I might be wrong of course and those publishers decided to look the other way as a birthday gift to id Software (fat chance).

EDIT: And it says there that Commander Keen: Aliens Ate My Babysitter copyrighted 1993 by id Software, All Rights Reserved. That's preposterous! The only semi-logical explanation for us not having that game is that FormGen got an exclusive publishing rights for 35 years and died out when GT Interactive bought them, probably not caring about those rights at all.
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Post edited February 12, 2021 by Cadaver747
It is quite controversial that the cover of the 6th Keen game is shown in the thumbnail of the store page that is not (yet) legally available digitally for incomprehensible legal reasons.
I love to play the Commander Keen games as I tried out them in my childhood on the Windows 98 OS PC. :)
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csikocska89: It is quite controversial that the cover of the 6th Keen game is shown in the thumbnail of the store page that is not (yet) legally available digitally for incomprehensible legal reasons.
I love to play the Commander Keen games as I tried out them in my childhood on the Windows 98 OS PC. :)
The only Commander Keen with a cover art was the sixth chapter. Maybe it was released physically at any time, but I ignore it. The rest were shareware titles wihout any cover.

When the collection was available digitally 3DRealms or probably Id Software published it with the sixth chapter cover. Keep in mind that if a diferent company takes the rights of a game not necessarily/automatically owns the rights of the art or covers etc. Itwill depend. It could be the case. If that is true the cover art rights should be in the ID Software side.
Post edited February 12, 2021 by Gudadantza
They could have used the one from "Goodbye Galaxy" since that's included with this pack:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/commander-keen-goodbye-galaxy/cover-art/gameCoverId,491654/