Vote for Sid Meier's Civilization I and II (MGE & Test of Time) to be added to GoG

[Knightfall]

I vote against because then civilization 1 abadon ware would become illegal/pulled from websites.

The best things in life are free.

Every person on the planet should be able to try out civilization 1 and see what a great game it is !

If tastes like more buy the bigger versions !

I do support a re-make of civilization 1 though, in 2D with fancy distance field rendering technology for crystal clear up scaling ! =D

I also think they already earned enough from civilization 1 to 6 versions out there, stop being greedy ! =D

I don't mean to be pedanitc, but I'm pretty sure that abandonware is always illegal.

 

[Skybuck]

I don't mean to be pedanitc, but I'm pretty sure that abandonware is always illegal.

That's up to a judge to decide, if it ever goes to court, must be somebody there to go to court, plus have a good story where it can be purchased legally, otherwise what is the point ?

It's probably something like copieing a house/architecture from 2000 years ago ?! Very unlikely that any family members can defend that copyright lol... maybe the state lol... but maybe they don't have the right anyway ! LOL. Plus copyrights expire anyway... civ1 is old, but not yet that old !

 

[Knightfall]

That's up to a judge to decide, if it ever goes to court, must be somebody there to go to court, plus have a good story where it can be purchased legally, otherwise what is the point ?

It's probably something like copieing a house/architecture from 2000 years ago ?! Very unlikely that any family members can defend that copyright lol... maybe the state lol... but maybe they don't have the right anyway ! LOL. Plus copyrights expire anyway... civ1 is old, but not yet that old !

Still, I feel that opposing a possible official re-release just to keep an abandonware version up is not a good idea.

 

[Blake00]

Agreed, plus legalities of abandonware sites (who's links are not permitted on CFC so our stance is clear) aside, the bigger point that pops into my head is that total people using abandonware sites versus total people using digital stores like Steam and GoG to buy old games is not even a close comparison. Probably because the common gamer doesn't knows about warez sites or avoids out of fear of viruses, spam and dodgyness (whether that be right or wrong). Either way.. Civ1&2 communities are pretty quiet these days and that's due to both time since being for sale in the 90s and current availability.

So sacrificing availability to the masses to please the few who use those sites is just not right. Getting the games back out there into stores injects new & returning players back into the communities again helping this place! THAT is the reason I'm doing this, I don't need the games in stores for myself, I already have them, so I'm doing this to right a wrong and help the community I care about regrow. And for those that can't see past their own preferences (and I've had plenty of those comments across social media sadly) a larger community means more mods, more scenarios, more fun discussions which then increases your enjoyment too. So in the end everybody wins... you just have to see the bigger picture.

Plus I wouldn't worry... because most of those abandonware sites are soooo legal and conscious about breaking laws (that was sarcasm) they've still got plenty of old games for download that are being sold in stores these days (eg you can still find Sid Meier's Colonization and Master of Magic on nearly every abandonware site these days despite them being rescued from exile and put on Steam and GoG) because the license holders did not go after them (because of the above point about the stores vs warez user totals not being comparable and big enough to warrant a threat). This reason this thread exists is because 2K don't care enough to re-release the games, so I think it's safe to say that even if someone like GoG or Firaxis or someone else successfully pushes 2K to release these games they are not going to care enough to go chase after abandonware sites hosting Civ1&2 meaning nothing will change for warez site users but everything will change for every one else.
.

 

[Knightfall]

Agreed, plus legalities of abandonware sites (who's links are not permitted on CFC so our stance is clear) aside, the bigger point that pops into my head is that total people using abandonware sites versus total people using digital stores like steam and GoG to buy old games is not even a close comparison. Probably because the common gamer doesn't knows about warez sites or avoids out of fear of viruses, spam and dodgyness (whether that be right or wrong). Either way.. Civ1&2 communities are pretty quiet these days and that's due to both time since being for sale in the 90s and current availability.

So sacrificing availability to the masses to please the few who use those sites is just not right. Getting the games back out there into stores injects new & returning players back into the communities again helping this place! THAT is the reason I'm doing this, I don't need the games in stores for myself, I already have them, so I'm doing this to right a wrong and help the community I care about regrow. And for those that can't see past their own preferences (and I've had plenty of those comments across social media sadly) a larger community means more mods, more scenarios, more fun discussions which then increases your enjoyment too. So in the end everybody wins... you just have to see the bigger picture.

Plus I wouldn't worry... because most of those abandonware sites are soooo legal and conscious about breaking laws (that was sarcasm) they've still got plenty of old games for download that are being sold in stores these days (eg you can find Sid Meier's Colonization and Master of Magic on nearly every abandonware site still these days despite them being rescued from exile and put on steam and gog) because the license holders did not go after them (because of the above point about the stores vx warez user totals not being comparable and big enough to warrant a threat). This reason this thread exists is because 2K don't care enough to re-release the games, so I think it's safe to say that even if someone like GoG or Firaxis or someone else successfully pushes 2K to release these games they are not going to care enough to go chase after abandonware sites hosting Civ1&2.

Plus official availability is important for historic preservation reasons. CIV I and II are landmark titles since they basically invented the 4X genre along with Master of Orion, so it's important they they're officially available rather than only being available from warez sites.

 

[The_J]

Interesting development: Today Atari announced that it has acquired more than 100 retro titles from the 80s and 90s, from Accolade, Infogrames, and most importantly Microprose. A few names of titles are in the article, but neither Civ1 nor Civ2 are among them, but according to the article this deal "includes groundbreaking and award-winning titles from Accolade, Infogrames, and Microprose" . So... who knows...?

 

[Blake00]

Thanks for sharing this news The_J that is very interesting. Also interesting that it says they acquired Nightdive who with Retroism re-released Sid Meier's Colonization. Retroism specialise in resurrecting old Microprose titles (to the point of saying it on their website) but have gone quiet since 2020 so I wonder if Atari got the Microprose stuff back that they had too. Knowing our luck it probably is just all the old Microprose war games titles and none of the later good stuff like Civilization, Colonization and their excellent Star Trek games eg Final Unity & Birth of The Federation are 2 of my fav trek games ever made but are stuck in limbo as the Trek licence complicates thing ever more!

 

[tupi]

Interesting development: Today Atari announced that it has acquired more than 100 retro titles from the 80s and 90s, from Accolade, Infogrames, and most importantly Microprose. A few names of titles are in the article, but neither Civ1 nor Civ2 are among them, but according to the article this deal "includes groundbreaking and award-winning titles from Accolade, Infogrames, and Microprose" . So... who knows...?

Interesting indeed. The exit from presumable copyright hell can be good for Civ 1, as it was good for original Colonization, which is now on GoG and Steam and have got some new players because of that. It cannot even be "reforged" in any way, because it's just dosbox. Well, lately some companies start to censor emulated ROMs, so who knows. Anyway, Civ 1 is so harmless. Yes, there's Stalin and Mao here, but game never took itself too seriously.

 

[Blake00]

Another little piece of info I noticed that increases the odds of 2K having the classic Civ games license is that the official Civilization site controlled by Firaxis and 2K have pages about Civ1 and Civ2 with no special lines about them belonging to anyone else.
https://civilization.com/civilization-1/
https://civilization.com/civilization-2/

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Did a followup email to all the organisations I've previous emailed last year just for the hell of it as it can't hurt the cause. I've also heard through the grape vine that Firaxis are aware of the issue (as I'm not the first to ask) but the decision is in 2K's hands.

Meanwhile I was reading a recent issue of Retro Gamer magazine and they did a interview with some of the main GoG people and there was an interesting line (annoyingly split across 2 pages so I've had to stitch these together lol) from Marcin Paczynski saying "If a game has more than 300 votes then you can be certain we have worked on trying to get it.". I find only 300 votes a bit hard to believe but whatever the real number is it's probably safe to say GoG have tried to look into the Civ1 & Civ2 situation as well when you consider we've got 2 Civ vote threads (links in top post) with around 10k votes and a bunch of other ones in the 2-5k range it so all together we've got tens of thousands of votes. Nevertheless I might chuck their business emails some messages too. More votes will of course push GoG into pestering 2K so hopefully fans will keep having their say in those vote threads and the numbers will keep climbing!

David Lagettie owns MicroProse and they are publishing smaller wargames and simulator types. It's possible they still have the distribution rights to Civ I. Every time I see a mention of when Take Two acquired old civ properties the list always starts with Civ 3. No idea about II.

The resurrection of MicroProse and return of "Wild Bill" Stealey

David Lagettie grew up with MicroProse games. Every time the developer and publisher released a new title, particularly…

www.gamesindustry.biz

The Australian Who Brought MicroProse Back From The Dead

The iconic MicroProse is back – and it’s being headed up by an Australian. But how exactly did an iconic...

www.kotaku.com.au

Since their focus is on making future franchises, they may not be thinking about the nickels and dimes they could get from gog. Or they may not have the rights. Maybe worth a try.

MicroProse | The name of the game in strategy and simulation

American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey and Sid Meier in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, many of which are regarded as groundbreaking, classics and cult titles, including starting the Falcon, F15 Strike Eagle, Silent Service, Civilization and X-COM...

www.microprose.com

email: innovation@microprose.co.uk

 

[Blake00]

Cheers mate I'll do a 'email run' on them in the near future too. However yeah 'new Microprose' are probably powerless and don't have the early Civ stuff sadly. But if they've got a good relationship with Atari and 2K then you never know.

For those who read my giant pitch section (thank you lol) talking about the technical hurdles you would have seen that while CivWIN and Civ2ToT are good to go, CivNET and Civ2MGE still has a music cd track reliance issue. However, I may have just been informed of a possible alternative that apparently GoG have already used in the past. It's a special CD audio track emulator that tricks the system/game into playing ogg files instead of CD tracks. I've gotta do some tests but we just might have found a solution to the last problem for true portability (making it easier to put on digital stores). More details here:

Using a CD audio track emulator for CivNET's CD audio music tracks

As we all know these days people can play both CivWIN and CivNET on modern 64bit operating systems using either a virtual XP machine or more recently WineVDM. However as discussed over in @Lord_Hill 's excellent ports comparison thread while CivWIN uses a wav file soundtrack CivNET uses the Civ2...

forums.civfanatics.com

Oh and I think I also forgot to post here that even the 16bit limitation on Civ1 for windows, CivNET and the earlier versions of Civ2 would no longer be an issue if GoG used the excellent WineVDM program. More details here:

Using WineVDM to play windows versions of Civilization I or old Civ1 fan programs

Been meaning to post about this one for a while & I think I've seen others mention it here in comments but it's time to post something more obvious and official about this! Even if you're not a regular Linux user many of us have probably heard of Wine before which allows Linux users to play...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[Blake00]

Am currently finally reading Sid Meier's Memoirs and there's an interesting part where he talks about that time where Firaxis and Take 2 acquire Microprose's licenses. He certainly makes it sound absolute and that Atari shouldn't have any remaining Civ license or any other Sid related Microprose stuff. However we know that's not the case as a lot of the old flight Sims including Sid's are not under 2K control plus there's the whole Sid Meier's Colonization having zero mention of 2K on Steam & GoG and instead having other publishers names stuff I previously posted in this thread certainly still raises questions to whether they really do have it all. Odds are 2K do indeed have full control of Civ1 & 2.. but there's still some slight doubt there.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Sounds like 2K originally were planning to buy everything off Infogrammes/Atari but ultimately settled on cherry picking the franchises they thought had a future. Here's another weird one though, 2K published Sid Meier's Pirates! but the Pirates Gold original digital release remains with Atari. If you were looking for a pattern, there isn't one

X-Com franchise
All legacy stuff published by 2K

Railroad Tycoon/Railroads
All legacy stuff published by 2K (including Rail Road Tycoon Deluxe released as freeware on the 2K website, nice), original Railroad Tycoon (not Deluxe) has never been released digitally

Pirates
Only Sid Meier's Pirates! published by 2K, Pirates Gold remains with Atari, original Pirates is bundled with Gold but has never been released digitally on its own.

Colonization
Only the Civ 4 spinoff expansion published by 2K, original Colonization remains with Atari

And of course only Civ games from the Infogrammes/Atari era onwards have been published by 2K, Civ I and II have never been released digitally, and only ever released by 2K as part of the retail 'Chronicles' set.

In conclusion, publishing rights deals are confusing!

 

[Blake00]

Oh wow.. good spotting.. yeah that certainly increases the doubt.

 

[Lord_Hill]

One more data point, apparently Sid Meier's Pirates Limited Edition (the big box with the t-shirt) has a copy of Pirates Gold for Windows on the bonus disk. So if that's true, 2k published it once before but not now. Also I now want that set, the Windows version is very hard to find these days.

EDIT no they didn't, that was an Atari release, oops

 

[Blake00]

Well it's been another year and sadly there's still no Civ1/Civ2/ToT in digital stores. I can't go into more detail but last anniversary a little bird told me that some progress had been made with the licence holder 2K but that these things take time and nothing was certain. Well considering another year has gone by it looks like more work is needed to get the message through to 2K that they can still make money off Civ1&2, it would be a nice addition to their upcoming Civ7 marketing, and that the classic Civ fans want this fixed! So the work to raise awareness continues and I'm pleased to say over the last 2 years we've accumulated roughly 6,650 more votes than when we started this so thank you to everyone who's voted! I should also mention that GoG did some spring cleaning and merged a couple of the vote threads together so I've crossed them out in the link list at the start of this thread.
.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Interesting to hear its at least been put to someone at 2k. I don't hold out much hope for civ 2 / tot as they pretty much require community patches these days which some publishers can be funny about, but surely a civ 1 dosbox release would be doable.