A lot of eyes glaze over when copyright and intellectual property law (IP) is mentioned, but in today’s world, it can mean that we get a remake or a sequel to a beloved game, or not.
The cult classic game, System Shock, may not be known widely known (hence the ‘cult’ tag), but it was a phenomenal step in gaming history. If you’re thinking that the name reminds you of BioShock, you’d be correct — BioShock is the spiritual successor to System Shock. One of the reasons that BioShock was created instead of System Shock 3 (there were already two entries in the System Shock series) was because of IP issues. In fact, the original owner of the System Shock IP had shut down and its assets (including intangible ones like IPs) somehow ended up with an insurance company. What is an insurance company supposed to do with a video game franchise? Meanwhile, the people who worked on System Shock and wanted to make some sort of sequel could not do so. And that’s how BioShock came to be. As a side note, another game series called Deus Ex also claims to be a spiritual successor to the System Shock series.
And that all sounds messy, right? But that’s not the end.
Eventually, the System Shock IP ended up with a company called Night Dive Studios. They now could do anything they wanted with it. They ended up repackaging both System Shock games so they could work on modern systems and started distributing them. Night Dive Studios went even further and eventually announced that they were doing a sort of remastered version, built total from the ground up in Unreal Engine 4, of the original System Shock game.
But here’s where it gets a little less straightforward.
See, the original creators, who were not a part of Night Dive Studios, found out that their beloved creation was freed from legal ambiguity. This obviously made them dream up a sequel — not a spiritual successor, but a bona fide sequel — to the game: System Shock 3. So they approached the current owners of the System Shock IP, Night Dive Studios, and asked them to allow them to create the sequel. The thing about IP law is that you can license the rights to an IP without selling it. So although Night Dive Studios licensed the rights for System Shock sequels to the original creators, Night Dive Studios is still the owner of the IP. Depending on the way the contract is worded, even the owners can’t do much about the license once it is signed, even though it is theirs to begin with. Granting a license is pretty common and it’s not a big deal.
Some time goes by and, guess what, the original creators (now flying under the flag of OtherSide Entertainment) make some cryptic announcements about how they are behind on the System Shock sequel and eventually “let go”. What the heck did that mean? Eventually they announce that the development of the sequel was now up to Tencent, a Chinese conglomerate that includes a massive video game portfolio. But where did Tencent come from? Wasn’t this a relationship between Night Dive Studios and OtherSide Entertainment?
And for years, there was no news or clarification on the matter.
Until Gamescom 2022.
According to VGC, Night Dive Studios’ CEO, Stephen Kick, said that the rights to create the System Shock sequels, which were licensed to OtherSide, had been subsequently transferred to Tencent.
“When we originally acquired the rights to the franchise, we licensed the rights for the third game to … Otherside. They then subsequently sold their rights to Tencent,” he explained.
You see, if the contract allows it, the IP can be sold or licensed yet again, and often without the original owner’s say-so. This is called an assignment. We can assume that OtherSide needed money or something, and then sold it to Tencent, which had loads of money to spare. Now Tencent can produce the sequel, or they can hold on to it for a period of time and flip it for a profit to someone else, without even adding a line of code or a pixel to the game. Fun, right?
So this is how something that should be straightforward can get so messy that it prevents anything productive from happening. But thankfully, it does not seem to be the case here. They System Shock remaster is still chugging along (apparently a playable demo showed up at the recent Gamescom 2022), and there still is hope for System Shock 3.
A version of this article was original posted on our main site, remanga.com.
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