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

[Blake00]

Completed my big email'athon over the weekend pestering GoG, 2K, Firaxis, Atari, Nightdive and Retroism again. As usual 2K support said they couldn't help me , all the Firaxis and Retroism emails bounced (as their emails were likely terminated after their parent company acquisitions), and GoG and Atari gave automated replies. However interestingly Nightdive support who've given me silence over previous years have now got back to me this time. A support staff member with both Nightdive & Atari in his sig thanked me for my ideas & support of Nightdive and that he'd forward my emails to their team. I made the point to them that if Nightdive & Atari have already managed to somehow publish Sid Meier's Colonization then why not go for Sid Meier's Civilization 1 & 2 (+Test of Time) as well since they're bigger more successful games that made more money and it's possible that Atari may even still own them too and if not then surely 2K would not ignore a request from Atari (unlike how they seemingly ignored Firaxis & GoG). So hopefully the Nightdive support fellow will indeed put this in front of the right eyes there and maybe just maybe they'll try to do with Civ1&2 what they did with Col! And let's not forget that Nightdive quite like doing remasters too so it would be very cool if someone there started looking into this and waking Atari up to the issue as who knows what could happen. As always it's an absolute almost futile long shot but Nightdive and Atari have both been very busy in the retro space over the last few years and whoever there pushed for the Col deal is surely a Civ fan too. So I have a better feeling about this latest email'athon than previous ones!

 

[Blake00]

Got another nice reply, this time from the Licensing department at Atari who confirmed that they do not own anything in the Civ series anymore but that they would let their main team know about this campaign and hopefully my suggestions that even if they don't own Civ1&2 anymore then maybe they could do a deal with 2K. I also reminded them that the spin off Colonization series is somehow split between Atari (for Microprose original) and 2K (for Firaxis sequel/remake) so I hope they're darn sure they don't still have the original Microprose Civ games.

I also sent a reply to 2K's support about them saying they're unable to forward the request on to anyone and pointed out that the wall around them is so high that it's impossible for their fans voices to be heard. They replied again saying that apparently what we say on their socials does have an impact but yeah.. I've been posting on the official Civ socials about this issue for years, I've posted on steam forums for newer Civ games, and of course I've contacted their support multiple times. So I kinda doubt that! Nevertheless if there is any truth to it then I guess it's a reminder for everyone to remember to keep pestering them about the Civ1&2 issue in the comments of their official Civ FB and Twitter posts.

However I still think the best chance is with convincing a third party to do a deal with 2K as they're more likely to listen to other companies making offers than us fans complaining. So fingers crossed maybe the latest barrage of emails I've sent to Atari, Nightdive and GoG might kick off something. If not well.. I'll try again in another year haha!
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[Blake00]

Had some more great replies guys.. quite surprising how much better things are going this time around compared to previous years 'emailathon's.

Firstly I had a really nice response last weekend from a guy in the Atari PR department (separate from the previous licensing and help desk emails I'd already got) saying that my proposal (of them doing a deal with 2K) is an interesting prospect and that he'll discuss it with their distribution team.

And secondly I just got a really good one from GoG again praising the campaign but then saying that I "will be quite pleased for what is coming next with our GOG Game Preservation program etc. Please watch the official comms!". Umm what?? Does that tease mean what I think it means???

Funnily enough just a week ago I was just looking over their excellent Game Preservation program and thinking "oh man surely they'll be making a play for Civ1&Civ2 for something like this" and have been crossing my fingers. So this sounds very promising! If anyone sees anything in the news LET ME KNOW!!!
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[Dadais]

And secondly I just got a really good one from GoG again praising the campaign but then saying that I "will be quite pleased for what is coming next with our GOG Game Preservation program etc. Please watch the official comms!". Umm what?? Does that tease mean what I think it means???

Well, not that enthousiastic about that.
Seen some gog releases where the game is just poured in a virtual machine to make its original form work,
yet ruins easy moddability, which is an important asset of civ2 in my mind, even more considering how far we got.

And there :

"The GOG Preservation Program aims to preserve the original game and make it playable on modern machines. This means being very careful with any modification that might alter the original experience. We also want to avoid passing the responsibility of maintaining the game’s quality on to the community, as it wouldn’t be fair to you."


Is an executable launching tot in a virtual machine making it hard to install totpp something to wish ?
Let's hope for the best

 

[Blake00]

Hmm that's a worry. Are those just DosBox VM's though as surely GoG can't legally distribute old copies of Microsoft Windows in VMs to people? That's always been the biggest hurdle stopping 16bit win games being released on GoG, so I'd be very surprised if they do that with Civ2 & ToT when it doesn't seem legally possible and they don't even need to anyway.

Fingers crossed they don't. Although worst case scenario that happens, then us members can start thinking about strategies & guides to help people get their files out of the vm and apply fan patches. It'll be annoying but once again legal copies of Civ2 back out there luring back tons of new and old players would make the frustration worth it! I really doubt this problem will happen though.
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[Lord_Hill]

Gog uses DosBox and ScummVM extensively but given Civ 2 can't be ran with either of those, I think we're safe!

All other virtualization software would require a windows licence and there's no way gog are paying for that.

 

[Quintillus]

It's interesting to consider at this point, with Windows 2000 nearing 25 years old - could it makes sense for GOG and Microsoft to strike a deal where GOG could legally sell games that required a bundled copy of Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, in exchange for a low fee per item sold (say, fifty cents) that requires such bundling? Microsoft isn't making any money from Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 anymore, and it's no longer plausible that someone who bought a copy of a game via GOG that came bundled with Windows 95 would, as a result, not buy a copy of Windows 11 and just use that GOG-based Windows 95 for all their everyday tasks instead.

It's small enough potatoes even if it results in a million old games sales per year that most likely Microsoft wouldn't pay it any attention, but there are some old-timers who if they're in the right area, maybe could get it the go-ahead. Of course there's still the whole "making sure it will run well when in a virtual machine" aspect of it, but from a business standpoint, I don't see it as crazy to consider that at some point in the not too distant future, Microsoft might be okay with 3.1 and 95 being licensed via GOG. It's not going to happen with Windows 7 any time soon, but for 3.1 and 95, it's a question of zero revenue today, versus a small amount of revenue plus a fair amount of goodwill.

Perhaps the more likely route to GOG supporting 16-bit Windows games is something like WineVDM, but with Nadella's more friendly, goodwill-focused, flexible Microsoft, it seems plausible that GOG might strike a deal with them in a way that it didn't when United States v. Microsoft was still setting the tone.