3 ms·

Yea that's what confuses me. Is he even legally allowed to sell this stuff? Should he even still have that stuff?! This gets into sketchy legal ground. I wish

Yea that's what confuses me. Is he even legally allowed to sell this stuff? Should he even still have that stuff?! This gets into sketchy legal ground. I wish he had contacted the German company he claims currently owns the rights and just asked if he could post it all up for free. It's not like it's going to hurt sales on platforms like GoG if they still have it up. He's already gotten some of the rights back for LSL1 at least when he did that remake (which honestly isn't all that great). He could have posted all the code and then sold the originals too; so it's in the commons and one person gets to be a collector and everyone wins. So .. EA doesn't own this? I thought Sierra was owned by EA (or got bought by some company that got bought by EA). I know The LSL rights went to some other company for a bit who produced the two PC/PlayStation Larry games (the university and movie one. Honestly I liked the University one; don't know why people hated on it. It was funny).

code_duck 8y ago
It’s like selling a copy of a book that you own. Unless you signed some sort of confidentiality agreement, there’s nothing that prohibits you from transferring the physical copy to someone else.
- rabidrat 8y ago
  Software is different from books. The EULA that you implicitly sign may prevent you from transferring ownership to someone else.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    There could be such a thing about books, it’s just that nobody does it. This guy worked for the company. He is not covered by that sort of license agreement, though definitely something could’ve been in his employment contract about the company’s property. Since he’s not claiming to own the code or the license to it, it’s physical property, not intellectual property. And with software, when it is covered by such a license agreement, typically you can do exactly this – sell your physical copy without claiming that you’re transferring any rights.
- jccalhoun 8y ago
  I think a better comparison would be owning the original manuscript. I might own the original manuscript to The Hobbit but that doesn't mean I can publish it.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    Correct, you couldn’t copy it and re-distribute, but you could sell your original copy.
- rtpg 8y ago
  I'm gonna take a guess that technically these disks were bought with Sierra money and aren't his except for the fact that they were lost to time from company inventory perspective
WorldMaker 8y ago
He has the right to sell the physical artifacts, its the IP laws that complicate everything. Yeah, I'm not sure where Al Lowe got "German company". Sierra for a long while was owned by French company Vivendi, though. It's Activision Blizzard that bought all of Vivendi's game assets (not EA). There might be a German Company involved in sublicensing LSL games specifically from Activision Blizzard? Most recent sublicense was Replay Games, I think? I don't think they are (were?) German either, but I'm not sure. There was a lot of weird drama with the LSL sublicense between Kickstarters and Activision Blizzard side projects, and I didn't follow it very well.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  One possible German company that was entangled with Sierra IP rights might be the former Deep Silver (Koch Media), because of THQ? Deep Silver bought a lot of IP assets from THQ including possibly some portion of Relic Entertainment's IP, which was a Sierra published studio. Though that German company no longer exists as such, because Deep Silver was recently purchased by THQ Nordic reuniting more of the THQ IP in Scandinavia. But also, that doesn't hold a lot of water, potentially, because it seems like Gearbox bought Relic's IP in the THQ bankruptcy, not Deep Silver. Though all of the above does help illustrate why game IP rights are so complicated and byzantine and a lot of classics are languishing because no one properly understands who has the real IP rights. (The "NOLF Paradox" as some of us call it these days. Which I just realize is funny because Sierra was the original NOLF co-publisher, too.)

code_duck 8y ago

It’s like selling a copy of a book that you own. Unless you signed some sort of confidentiality agreement, there’s nothing that prohibits you from transferring the physical copy to someone else.

rabidrat 8y ago
Software is different from books. The EULA that you implicitly sign may prevent you from transferring ownership to someone else.
- code_duck 8y ago
  There could be such a thing about books, it’s just that nobody does it. This guy worked for the company. He is not covered by that sort of license agreement, though definitely something could’ve been in his employment contract about the company’s property. Since he’s not claiming to own the code or the license to it, it’s physical property, not intellectual property. And with software, when it is covered by such a license agreement, typically you can do exactly this – sell your physical copy without claiming that you’re transferring any rights.
jccalhoun 8y ago
I think a better comparison would be owning the original manuscript. I might own the original manuscript to The Hobbit but that doesn't mean I can publish it.
- code_duck 8y ago
  Correct, you couldn’t copy it and re-distribute, but you could sell your original copy.
rtpg 8y ago
I'm gonna take a guess that technically these disks were bought with Sierra money and aren't his except for the fact that they were lost to time from company inventory perspective

WorldMaker 8y ago

He has the right to sell the physical artifacts, its the IP laws that complicate everything. Yeah, I'm not sure where Al Lowe got "German company". Sierra for a long while was owned by French company Vivendi, though. It's Activision Blizzard that bought all of Vivendi's game assets (not EA). There might be a German Company involved in sublicensing LSL games specifically from Activision Blizzard? Most recent sublicense was Replay Games, I think? I don't think they are (were?) German either, but I'm not sure. There was a lot of weird drama with the LSL sublicense between Kickstarters and Activision Blizzard side projects, and I didn't follow it very well.

WorldMaker 8y ago
One possible German company that was entangled with Sierra IP rights might be the former Deep Silver (Koch Media), because of THQ? Deep Silver bought a lot of IP assets from THQ including possibly some portion of Relic Entertainment's IP, which was a Sierra published studio. Though that German company no longer exists as such, because Deep Silver was recently purchased by THQ Nordic reuniting more of the THQ IP in Scandinavia. But also, that doesn't hold a lot of water, potentially, because it seems like Gearbox bought Relic's IP in the THQ bankruptcy, not Deep Silver. Though all of the above does help illustrate why game IP rights are so complicated and byzantine and a lot of classics are languishing because no one properly understands who has the real IP rights. (The "NOLF Paradox" as some of us call it these days. Which I just realize is funny because Sierra was the original NOLF co-publisher, too.)