A few weeks ago I saw a private server from a MMORPG where it seemed the owners bought the license of the game to run this server and they got all full working server files from the developers.
Let us assume someone would be willed to buy the Spellborn license. What would he need to do?
I don't have any clue about such stuff but maybe someone else has?
And how much would it still cost after all these years?
In the past I heard something that Spellborn NV wanted about 3 millions for the license to run the game.
But since Spellborn NV doesn't exist anymore who owns the license for Spellborn? And which person I would have to contact.
I just thought about these things for a while and wanted to share these thoughts with you guys.
I think that's the hardest part, knowing whom to actually contact. What i understand from reading about it, is that it's unclear who owned the rights in the end after all the legal back and forth.
And i'd be somewhat pessimistic, if it's a big player. They probably won't give out licenses for a reasonable price, even if the game is technically abandoned.
Though i'm all for it.
Edit: i remembered that some contracts for cases like this have a non-transfer clause in them though; that would mean after a studio closes the rights are no longer with them. Maybe that's something to dig deeper about.
The wikipedia article about Abandonware has an interesting section "Commercial software owned by a company no longer in business". in my understanding, this would atleast free one from legal hastle. Non profit and small userbase being other points are a strong argument too in my opinion.
Edit: thinking about it i dont believe there`s even any legal entity left for spellborn one would be able to get a license from.. so it`s basically good will from an individual involved in its creation or personal effort like what we tried.
Well, that's interesting.
So if nobody owns the rights for this game anymore I'm wondering if any of the former developers still has some backups of the servercode or something and If he would be allowed to make it public.
Since then i've learned that i was wrong with this assumption (i've contacted a few of them with exactly this intention). Allegedly, there are still (other, undisclosed) involved legal entities in existance, which sadly prevents them from making this happen..
At least the owners of tcos.com they still try to get money for their domain as it's valued at $24999. If I am not mistaken tcos.com is owned by khaeon gamestudio. They placed it on afternic to sell it.
They might still be a party we could contact.
I'm not certain that Spellborn NV no longer exists - I couldn't find any information that it actually is defunct... could be a blanket company now to manage the rights, though I doubt it.
So these are the guys one would need to contact.
Im really curious, if they are willed to sell it in the first place, how much a license for a spellborn server with the latest code would cost. Especially if it's only non commercial for the sake of true fans.
As far as i understood, in the end there were huge piles of unresolved cash flows. So i'd imagine that whoever was involved in this is still somewhat likely to demand high amounts, if given the chance, just to potentially compensate parts of their previous loss; And that those are not directly connected to the friendly devs, more like other parties not primarily interested in fans, but profit. I'd love to be wrong though.