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

[Blake00]

Thank you. Hmm that is interesting. Looks like this happened before the Atari & 2k Games Civilization deal in 2005. I can see Infogrames (who became modern Atari) on the box so I guess those local Spanish distributors did a deal with Infogrames to a budget re-release of Civ2.

 

[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.
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[Dadais]

Digitalisation selling would bring the benefit of new players indeed.

On the other side, the compatibility work coming with gog makes me wonders : what compatibility with the wonderfull Totpp TheNamelessOne gifted the community ?

 

[Blake00]

Digitalisation selling would bring the benefit of new players indeed.

That's the biggest thing. The injection of new and returning players pouring in here looking for mods and tips would be awesome. No doubt a % would want to get into modding themselves too. Could trigger a last Civ2 renaissance of sorts. That's my dream anyway.

On the other side, the compatibility work coming with gog makes me wonders : what compatibility with the wonderfull Totpp TheNamelessOne gifted the community ?

If a deal gets done that would indeed be the big question. Will they do a deal with FoxAhead for MGE and TheNamelessOne for ToT.. or would they simply do their own work which could potentially result in exe files being not compatible with the patch tools. FoxAhead is still around would probably be on top of it quickly but TNO has been gone for a while now. Obviously we'd be fine as we use original Civ2 copies.. but all the new players would be in some trouble. But hey.. us getting constantly pestered by an influx of new people coming in here trying to get their GoG copies working with our stuff is a very good problem to have haha!

 

[Per-aa]

Thanks for the recent update Blake00. I'm wondering, would both a petition and a letter writing campaign from Civ fans help in putting some pressure on 2K to get them to change their minds about rereleasing both Civs1 & 2 on GoG and Steam? Appeal to their greed by telling them that it would be in their best interest to both cater to us Civ fans and introduce these games to new players.

 

[Blake00]

Thanks for the recent update Blake00. I'm wondering, would both a petition and a letter writing campaign from Civ fans help in putting some pressure on 2K to get them to change their minds about rereleasing both Civs1 & 2 on GoG and Steam? Appeal to their greed by telling them that it would be in their best interest to both cater to us Civ fans and introduce these games to new players.

Letter writing is an interesting idea that may still work even in this day and age. I've emailed a bunch of 2K business emails a few times over the years and got nothing, posted on the 2K FB/Twitter/Instagrams/forums but get ignored, and have contacted their help desk and got the expected "sorry we can't help you with that enquiry and no we can't pass it on to anyone in management sorry" rubbish too. The wall around around them is pretty epic so alternative methods of bothering them are welcome lol! And yes as far as I know it's just been me pestering them so far, so the more of us trying the better!

 

[Per-aa]

How about a petition to 2K similar to what Grummz is doing for Stellar Blade? It involves signatures that when a certain goal number is reached will be printed and sent to the game company's HQ address. Imagine their reception desk, or the CEO's office itself, loaded down with boxes and boxes of paper printouts with signatures of people requesting the rerelease Civs 1 & 2 with Civ 2's Fantastic Worlds expansion. It would be worth a try.

 

[Blake00]

How about a petition to 2K similar to what Grummz is doing for Stellar Blade? It involves signatures that when a certain goal number is reached will be printed and sent to the game company's HQ address. Imagine their reception desk, or the CEO's office itself, loaded down with boxes and boxes of paper printouts with signatures of people requesting the rerelease Civs 1 & 2 with Civ 2's Fantastic Worlds expansion. It would be worth a try.

Hmm looks like he used a change org petition.. might indeed be worth it.. although they actually printed it and hand delivered it to the HQs in America and Korea lol. So we'd have to mail it I guess. Looks like 2K is in Novato, California and Firaxis is in Baltimore, Maryland.

 

[Blake00]

Quick update.. good to see some of the top most vote links have had a few hundred increases over the last few months. Presumably either because of me posting this in lots of places or just lots of people out there thinking the same thing of "why aren't these hugely successful & popular old games being sold anywhere when so many lesser games of the same era are?".

I noticed something interesting this week. Much like with the Civilization series, Firaxis & 2K presumably have full control over the Colonization franchise too. Yet classic Colonization on steam is not under their control? I expected it to look similar to the Civ4 Colonization page:


Yet it instead looks like this:


GoG is similar...

Civ4Col:


Classic Col:


I don't know Retroism.. but I do know Nightdive as they've been behind some awesome retro remasters and remakes (eg Doom 64, System Shock and Blade runner) and specialize in acquiring abandon ware games stuck in licencing hell and selling them with or without improvements. So why is classic Colonization under their control and not 2Ks? I feel this is confirmation of our suspicions that when 2K acquired the rights to the Civ and Col franchises in the 2000s from Atari (formerly Infogrames formerly Hasbro) that for whatever reason the older existing Microprose titles were not part of the deal and got left behind in Atari's infamous IP dungeon. Presumably these guys rescued (ie made a deal) classic Col from Atari similar to the recent events with Slitherine rescuing the Master of Magic licence from Atari (and now getting MuHa to do a remake). Or I guess there's also the possibility that maybe 2K did get them but weren't interested in doing anything with them and these guys made a deal with them instead?

Either way presumably whatever situation classic Colonization was in, is probably the exact same one that Civ1, Civ2, and Test of Time are currently sitting in. Clearly someone with some swing/power who had a lot of love for Col basically took notice of the problem, saw a retro business opportunity, and did something about it.. if we could just get someone to notice the rest! I might see if I can contact these guys to ask about how they got Col and mention the Civ situation. I'll try their forums, twitters, and emails if I can get them. I'll probably be ignored but like I said above, I can't hurt to ask! If anyone has a way to speak with Firaxis too please let me know, I know they're a developer effectively powerless in this but it would be interesting to get their thoughts on this Civ1&2 issue, and maybe they can speak to 2K.

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Interesting.. for Colonization's 30th anniversary I had a fresh look at the Steam and GoG pages and the publisher info has changed since this post a few years ago. Retroism is gone and Atari have appeared! So I think that probably answers who's IP dungeon classic Colonization was sitting in when those guys rescued it as it appears to have reverted back to Atari. So presumably when 2K & Firaxis did Civ4 Col they had to do a deal with Atari for the Colonization rights. Which once again creates some fresh doubt as to whether 2K truly does own the old Microprose era Civ1-2 rights as maybe 2K just did a temp deal with Atari to use them in the 2006 Chronicles pack.

Sid Meier's Colonization (Classic) on Steam

The New World lies before you with all its peril, promise and infinite possibility. Your colonists anxiously follow you to shore. The treasures of an entire continent await you.

store.steampowered.com

Sid Meier's Colonization

Discover the New World and fulfill your Manifest Destiny! The New World lies before you

www.gog.com

 

[Dadais]

Can we also fear that the code is simply lost ?

I don't like what the video game "industry" is evolving into ...

 

[Patine]

Can we also fear that the code is simply lost ?

I don't like what the video game "industry" is evolving into ...

There was an interview by Richard, "Lord British," Garriott, the co-founder of Origin Games and the Creator of the Ultima franchise, who has booted by his own company, about the mess that industry has turned into, especially in the transition from what was, effectively, a cottage industry to a big corporate endeavour.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Can we also fear that the code is simply lost ?

I don't like what the video game "industry" is evolving into ...

That would suck if the code really is lost :/

 

[Civinator]

That would suck if the code really is lost :/

They said the same about the Civ 3 code when there was an attempt by some Civ 3 modders to gain the code, but later it was shown that the code wasn´t lost when they sold it to a Canadian education program.

 

[Per-aa]

Can we also fear that the code is simply lost ?

I don't like what the video game "industry" is evolving into ...

That would be my fear too. I certainly hope not. Yeah, gaming developers, at least most of the AAA ones, have gone the way of big corpos, getting greedier and dissing the core fan base of gamers. But there is push back going on by most of us, in general, and that is definitely a good thing.

 

[Lord_Hill]

There have been a few remasters recently that have embraced community efforts and ended up hiring people from the mod scene to basically recreate their unofficial patch or remake as an official remaster (The OpenLara dev for Tomb Raider 1+2+3 for example). I'd love to see Firaxis take that approach for civ 1+2. It neatly sidesteps the 'no source code' issue as well, as the community have pretty much already completely RE'd both of the games anyway.