https://www.techdirt.com/2025/11/13/no-one-lives-forever-turns-25-you-still-cant-buy-it-legitimately/ [ ] Techdirt. [ ] * Sign In * Register * Preferences Techdirt [ ] * TechDirt * GreenHouse * Free Speech * Error 402 * Ctrl-Alt-Speech * Deals * Jobs * Support Techdirt [podcast-ti] Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Deviation From The Teen After Destroying Federal Regulators, AT&T Wages War On Industry 'Self-Regulation' Regimes Like NARB, NAD 'No One Lives Forever' Turns 25 & You Still Can't Buy It Legitimately [copy-right] Copyright from the abandonware dept Thu, Nov 13th 2025 08:11pm - Timothy Geigner One of my favorite things in all of professional sports is the unofficial holiday referred to as "Bobby Bonilla Day." The short version of it is that Bonilla played for the New York Mets decades ago and eventually bought out his contract in 2000 when they decided they were done with him. Rather than pay the $5.9 million buyout of the contract up front, the team instead made the bonkers decision to negotiate a deferred payment schedule for that amount with 8% interest over the course of 25 years. The result is that the Mets will be paying Bonilla $1.2 million per year every July 1st, starting in 2011 and ending in 2035. And if you can't make sense of the math on that one, it's because you aren't aware that the Mets ownership was one of Bernie Madoff's many victims, which is why they had to defer the payments. November 10th is not Bobby Bonilla Day. But it should be named "Let Us Play No One Lives Forever, You Assholes Day." The classic spy-shooter turned 25 on that date and, for the exact same reasons we've detailed for a god damned decade now, you still can't buy the game. Here's the short of it. Due to a series of mergers, closures, and rights purchases, the IP rights for No One Lives Forever and its sequel have been potentially split into three pieces between Warner Bros., Activision, and 20th Century Fox, like it was some kind of fucking horcrux. I say potentially because nobody really knows who owns what, if anything, when it comes to these games. When one company, Nightdive Studios, attempted to remaster and re-release the game as they've done with other titles, along with securing trademark rights to the game which hasn't been sold in over a decade, all three companies complained that they may have rights to it and may sue over it. All of those qualifiers are, again, because even these companies themselves don't know what rights they actually have. And why is that? Well, because the gaming rights deals were inked before digital storage was widely used for this sort of thing and, well, nobody seems to be able to locate the actual paperwork denoting who owns what. Here's an example of an exchange Nightdive had with Activision. "So we went back to Activision and, [after] numerous correspondence going back and forth, they replied that they thought they might have some rights, but that any records predated digital storage. So we're talking about a contract in a box someplace." Kuperman laughed. "The image I get is the end of Indiana Jones... somewhere in a box, maybe in the bowels of Activision, maybe it was shipped off to Iron Mountain or somewhere. And they confessed, they didn't have [their] hands on it. And they weren't sure that they even had any of those rights." Which didn't keep Activision from warning Nightdive that it might totally sue if it moved forward with remastering the game. The other companies made similar noises. So what's a person to do if they want to play this game? You can't buy it legitimately currently. It's not even for sale anywhere. And a situation like that, which I've stated before, completely breaks the copyright bargain. The only option is, as Kotaku of all places notes, to download it for free from somewhere. Downloading games that are available for sale is piracy. It's illegal, and it's not supportive of developers and their art. But when companies have gone out of their way to refuse to take your money for a game for the better part of two decades, it's a very different situation. Look, I'm not your real mom and dad, and I can't tell you what to do. But if you were to click on this link (link removed by Techdirt due to us not knowing where it takes you) and download both games (as well as spin-off Contract Jack), you'd end up with modernized versions of these classic games, with mods that allow them to work on Windows 10 and 11, and in widescreen. And what better time to do (or not do) this than on the first game's 25th anniversary? At this point (as indeed it was over eight years ago, the last time I suggested just downloading it, to no negative response at all) we have to consider No One Lives Forever to be abandonware. No one is willing to take ownership of it, although those that could do so sometimes mindlessly threaten to intervene should anyone else try to rebuild it for sale. Nightdive were scared off a decade ago, and it's been sitting on GOG's Dreamlist since that launched earlier this year (with 87,171 people saying they'd pay for it if they could). It's far too small of a concern for any of the megacorps who might own it to spend the time and money to work out if they do, but it's far too big of a concern within gaming history to be allowed to just disappear. Thank goodness for the anonymous heroes running NOLF Revival. I thank them for their service. It's the only option the public has to play this game and enjoy this small piece of our collective culture. The real answer here is some sort of copyright reform that makes this situation not a thing. If a company, or group of companies, won't offer a piece of work for sale, can't be bothered to understand what they own of it, if anything, and have no plans to figure any of that out... then how can this be copyright infringement? So happy "Let Us Play No One Lives Forever, You Assholes" Day. Maybe we'll be able to play this game legitimately by the time Bobby Bonilla stops making his million and change per year. Filed Under: copyright, ip rights, no one lives forever, video games Companies: 20th century fox, activision, microsoft, nightdive, warner bros. 18 CommentsLeave a Comment If you liked this post, you may also be interested in... * Copyright Is The Wrong Tool To Deal With Deepfake Harms * 'Stop Killing Games' Finds More Allies From MPs In The UK * CyberGhost DMCAs Our Story About Their Bogus DMCA (Yes, Really) * Mexican Government To Tax Violent Video Games It Says Make Kids Violent * Reddit's 'AI Scraping' Lawsuit Is An Attack On The Open Internet * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Rate this comment as insightful Rate this comment as funny You have rated this comment as insightful You have rated this comment as funny Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam You have flagged this comment The first word has already been claimed The last word has already been claimed Lightbulb icon Laughing icon Flag icon Lightbulb icon Laughing icon Comments on "'No One Lives Forever' Turns 25 & You Still Can't Buy It Legitimately" Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment * Filter comments in by Time * Filter comments as Threaded * Filter only comments rated Insightful * Filter only comments rated funny LOL * Filter only comments that are Unread 18 Comments Collapse all replies [user-default]Arianity (profile) says: November 13, 2025 at 8:24 pm Maybe we'll be able to play this game legitimately by the time Bobby Bonilla stops making his million and change per year. Ahh, a refreshing bit of optimism in these dark times! Collapse replies (1) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [a214a8265e]Anonymous Coward says: November 14, 2025 at 8:08 am Re: I don't really agree it's optimistic. Why does "legitimacy" depend on us giving money to assholes? Why should we go so far as to seek them out and force them to take our money? What does it mean to "buy" digital data anyway? I say it is legitimate to download games for free online. It's not in any way related to "piracy", and we shouldn't be treating it as somehow "wrong". There's certainly no need to lament our inability to find some corporate overlord to give money to. The best copyright reform would be abolition. But I don't see why we should wait for legislators, who are out of touch and are anyway in bed with corporate interests, to realize this. We could stop giving money to copyright maximalists right now. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [user-default]Phoenix84 (profile) says: November 13, 2025 at 8:34 pm IANAL, but I'd say just release and let them sue. If they can't find the documentation during discovery, case dismissed. Maybe even counter-sue for legal fees. Collapse replies (2) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [user-default]frankcox (profile) says: November 13, 2025 at 9:21 pm Re: But then they have an incentive to look for the paperwork. they don't have any particular reason to go looking right now but if they see money and a lawsuit they'll assign someone to start digging. You could be in for a really big payout to them. So it would be a gamble, and the potential payoff is probably not worth the risk you would be taking. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [youarewrong-av]Thad (profile) says: November 14, 2025 at 10:33 am Re: IANAL, but I'd say just release and let them sue. You didn't need to add that first part, it's implied. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [6fb5cd46a8]Anonymous Coward says: November 13, 2025 at 10:12 pm Isn't it funny. If you couldn't prove you own your house the rich would you you and your family dead in the streets instantly. If they can't prove they own the ip. No one is allowed to ever touch it. All the rich need to die like the evil pedophiles they are. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [user-default]escapecharacter (profile) says: November 13, 2025 at 10:53 pm I am baffled why we make intellectual property as legally upheld as physical property, and yet we still end up with these areas that are so untouchably gray area nobody can do anything. In terms of physical property gray areas, there are certainly disputed areas, but almost nowhere on Earth do people avoid due to the ambiguity. The only real example I know is Bir Tawil. Collapse replies (2) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [6cc640f381]Anonymous Coward says: November 13, 2025 at 11:15 pm Re: It happens all the time in physical property; the most sterotypical example would be inheritance law, but it regularly shows up in business as well (most commonly small businesses, partnerships, S corps, etc, though also in areas like bankuptcy proceedings for larger businessnesses, and certainly when things become transnational). Perhaps the main point of commonality for areas where this is common is the old cliche; possession may not literally be 9/10 of the law, but it certainly has a major impact. Whenever it is not really an option to rule on physical possession, ownership of anything routinely becomes exactly the gray area you complain of. As for your example regarding physical land claims by govenments, that's a funny joke. There are massive areas of land whose ownership is "untouchably gray" and are generally avoided. Your example is only notable in that nobody is currently dying over it. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [1e4674ecf1]Anonymous Coward says: November 14, 2025 at 9:45 am Re: intellectual property as legally upheld as physical property It would be interesting to see something like adverse possession. Like, if it's been openly distributed as abandonware for 10 years without complaint, it becomes public-domain. (Not that 10-year-old stuff has any business being copyrighted anyway.) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [user-default]jakobbp (profile) says: November 14, 2025 at 1:06 am Those NOLF IP "feeling unproductive, might litigate later... idk <3<3 <3" hogging assholes can burn in... molten lava? Very nice. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word This comment has been deemed insightful by the community. [user-default]Candescence (profile) says: November 14, 2025 at 4:23 am The fact that the link in the article is indeed a valid, working dedicated site for hosting "pirated" copies of these games and it hasn't been taken down in nearly a decade says a lot about how much the potential "rightsholders" genuinely do not give a damn about this series. Feels like copyright law should have stipulations for cases like this, especially considering how long terms are right now - corporations shouldn't be sitting on copyrights doing absolutely nothing with them like dragon hoards. Collapse replies (1) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [0d9fcc27bd]Teka says: November 14, 2025 at 6:01 am Re: They don't care enough to get a judgement on some random internet site- but if there was a potential to demand a nice slice carved off of GOG then you bet they would be digging through those metaphorical or literal boxes. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [e5bcd4906b]Gary Bass says: November 14, 2025 at 8:14 am No one lives forever question Is that the song from the opening in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 with Top Chop and Leatherface? Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [7277742d54]The Phule says: November 14, 2025 at 8:19 am Prolly should just call their bluff. If they don't have a contract in a box, well, sucks to be them. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [user-default]Nimrod (profile) says: November 14, 2025 at 9:28 am No-one plays...forever. Well, legally anyway. The only games are being played by the corporations, and played so poorly that EVERYONE loses. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [82ff5ceb7b]Anonymous Coward says: November 14, 2025 at 10:45 am Tim, your comments and the comments on here about "how can this be copyright infringement" indicate that culturally, we now live in a world where both the reason for copyright and the use of copyright are strongly at odds with the LEGAL thing that is copyright. If someone creates something, copyright gives them, for a limited time, control over who can make copies, in exchange for encouragement to create works in the first place knowing that there will be a period of exclusivity on creating those copies. In this case, the work is already created, and the owners of the rights are essentially saying "we know that we own some bits of this, and we want to enforce our exclusivity." That's fully within their rights, and could be (tenuously) argued to be part of what convinced the original rightsholders to create the game (and then sell the rights). What annoys me more is when an original creator writes something, sells the copyright, and then is prevented from creating new works by the new rights holder who has no intention of creating anything new themselves, but is using the copyright instead as a tool to restrict the marketplace, pumping up the value of unrelated and already created works. This is the exact OPPOSITE of the intention behind copyright. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [u2515_100x0-1]ECA (profile) says: November 14, 2025 at 11:47 am What was that com[panies name. The One that is and Aint in Australia, that Pops up a Store every few years, that Doent sell anything, it JUST stands there, to KEEP the Rights to the company name. Collapse replies (1) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [u2515_100x0-1]ECA (profile) says: November 14, 2025 at 11:49 am Re: Can you see Having to store 1 copy of a program SOMEPLACE, forever to keep your rights. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word --------------------------------------------------------------------- [] says: Add Your Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here Name [ ] Email [ ] [ ]Subscribe to the Techdirt Daily newsletter URL [ ] Subject [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] Comment Options: (*)Use markdown. ( )Use plain text. 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