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

I was searching for custom cars for 1nsane and found this website :

http://vnovak.com

Never heard about this game before .

http://www.gamerankings.com/pc/199197-viper-racing/index.html

Questions :

Who owns the rights of the game or is it became freeware ?
If not , is there any chance for a Gog release ?



The 1nsane files can be found in here : http://vnovak.com/1nsane

It was a Sierra game, so it likely belongs to Activision now... Car licensing seems to be one of the more difficult issues to combat in getting games re-released (see Colin McCrea). I can't imagine anything licensed would be released as freeware. I'd be skeptical for a re-release as well.

Which is probably the reason why we won't see Blur here soon. :( Gosh, I love this game.

The only old racing game with licensed cars that I know has been rereleased, is Screamer 4x4. Car relicensing has a probably prohibitive cost, which is why even a large company like EA hasn't bothered rereleasing their older Need for Speed games anywhere (not even on Origin).

This game features some wild cheats, such as carmageddon like bombs against other racers! :)
Thanks Painted_Doll for bringing it up! :P Let's not forget the not-so-old 1C's/Aspyr 4x4 Hummer (an old favorite) who actually showed up on Gamersgate, but now it simply vanished. :(

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Yes and I'm surprised that the owners of the trademarks for those cars aren't willing to sign a deal. Getting any money at all out of it is better than having those games not be available legally.

At least I assume it's the trademark holders holding it up. Otherwise, I really don't get why it isn't a done deal.

I don't think carmanufacturers are the problem but a license has to be legalized by lawyers and knowing what these people cost per hour you need to sell a lot of copies, which makes these old games that sell for just 6-12 dollars not really interesting for the publishers.

That's probably it, although they already have licensing agreements for them. I can't imagine that the agreements need that much scrutiny in cases where there weren't any problems previously.

I'd think that reusing the old ones with minor changes to reflect the new stores wouldn't take that much time or money.

Maybe there is another reason as well, a company like Codemasters produce new racinggames almost every year, if they start making the old ones available it might hurt the sales of their new games.

Perhaps, although the games wouldn't have come here at all in that case. Not to mention that older games aren't really competitive with newer games due to the improved physics engines that are possible.

Ultimately, the only people that know aren't talking, so it's all speculative. But, it does seem kind of odd that there hasn't been a deal struck to get them some money.

So this is why we don't see Grand Prix Legends too on Gog .