vv221: This on the other hand is obviously wrong. This is a remake in all but name.
It is a remake in name also, considering the "Startopia" right there in the name. The 17 years ago mentioned is a few years after Startopia was released but also suggests continuity with the older game. It looks like the original developer went out of business in 2003 and while the original publisher was Eidos (now part of Square Exix) GOG is listing the publisher as My Little Planet Ltd., a small UK company (run by someone from the original developer it looks like, not sure if it benefits the real developers at all or just some wealthy executive who had the money to buy the rights). It sounds like the transfer of rights from Eidos happened while this one was in development so I would suspect a decent amount of behind the scenes drama of some type.
Also, the US Trademark office lists the original Startopia trademark as active and "Spacebase Startopia" as dead (doesn't look like I can link to the particular pages, do a
basic word search for startopia). It could be that "My Little Planet, Ltd." was getting ready for legal action but may have decided against it due to the release not going all that well (and reminding people of the original game). GOG will have looked into this and decided whatever was going on was ok by them.
Anyway, with it seemingly not a popular game we can likely expect heavy discounts even faster than usual.
