Who has the Drakan ip now ?

Discuss Drakan: The Ancient's Gates with other players (no spoilers please!)
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dg1995
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Who has the Drakan ip now ?

Post by dg1995 »

Hey there. New member here in this old site.(Played both Drakan games recently and fell in love with them.Thanks for the fixes guys ! :D )

So, now let's get to the topic:

I thought that Sony owns the Drakan ip. But then I saw some posters here say that Warner Bros owns it.

Which one really has it ? :idea:

Also, that cancelled remake on Unity was DMCA take downed. Which publisher did that ? Warner or Sony ?

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Arokhs Twin
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Re: Who has the Drakan ip now ?

Post by Arokhs Twin »

The IP remains with Sony, Warner Bros acquired Midway Games who published Surreal Software's later games such as the Suffering. As Drakan OOTF was published by Psygnosis which became part of Sony Warner Bros could not take over it's IP. As for Surreal Software they were acquired by Monolith games who in turn were acquired by Warner Bros.

Unless a developer self publishes the IP of the games they make lie with the publishing company. An example of a developer self publishing their games is Larian Studios (at least with their later games such as Original Sin 2) their first games were published by a 3rd party although Larian bought the IP to the games off them.

As for the DMCA takedown, that didn't happen. The remake was pulled due to potential copyright infringements and the change from making the game to be a commercial product which is definitely not allowed. Originally the remake was to be free and it was a requirement to own the original game but it was decided to sell it commercially so any Drakan related content had to be removed. The remake in question is now named The Searing Mountain.
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yangez93
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Re: Who has the Drakan ip now ?

Post by yangez93 »

Situation of the actual IP of Drakan is very complicated. As Arokhs Twin mentioned actual IP at least for Drakan:The Ancients' Gates trademark still belongs to Sony with automatic update of assignment of ownership. Drakan OOTF is marked as Abandonware, but I heard that it doesn't mean that others can do whatever they want with that title as all IP is protected by law, depending on the country. WB probably owns only assets of Surreal Software but all depends on contracts between companies, so it might mean that Drakan assets don't belong to WB, but to the publisher.

As for remake, the concept of making such a project was a bad idea, firstly by assumption it doesn't make any profit so development of the project is doomed to failure. Second was of course IP, rather it didn't cause problems as similar Unity projects were multiple, including Tomb Raider fan made remakes, Star wars remakes etc. Or even total conversion mods as Skywind. Only Drakan recreation project that has some chance to develop is of course OpenDrakan by Zalasus.

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