[Free Game] No One Lives Forever 1, 2

Could you link the RPS article (link provided by IncoherentLight post #2) in the OP?
Considering all owners had NO intention to even help sort the issue with the rights that NightDive tried to solve, I hate it when people cry about piracy....and maybe reading this article helps them understand what a shitshow the rightsholders have been done.^^

What do you mean?

The Nolf games are way better indeed and Contract Jack has it's issues but it was a fun and fast game for me. I have them all 3 on retail hard copy and I still like playing them.

yeap, but still i don't want to download it from some random guy (ಠ_ಠ)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7ff7ug/no_one_lives_forever_forgotten_gems/
mod:

Just a quick reminder of Rule 5 - no linking to pirated content
Anyone who posts links to pirated content will be banned.

Abandonware is just a term people use to make themselves feel better about their pirating.

look up DMCA and DMCA take down notice, basically now copyright never expires but it has to be invoked if there is someone with the right to invoke it; i'd sympathize more with artists if at some point the rights would go to the public domain but with big media lobbying i don't think that will ever happen again.

Or "it's OK to pirate this because there is literally no other way to get your hands on a copy right now.".

Because of the weird legal limbo the games are in, as jimnms alluded to.

To elaborate on that mess:
These 3 corporations potentially have rights to the franchise:

• Warner (because they own Monolith, the dev. these days),
• 20th Century Fox (who initially published the games under Fox Interactive)
• Activition (because Fox Interactive was bought out by Vivendi games, and Videndi games then merged with Activision).

And all 3 are a bunch of fools, because none of them want to claim their possible rights to the franchise, nor disclaim ownership so someone else can do that more easily.
At the very least Fox should just bow out, as their claim would be the weakest without actual proof/paperwork (which apparently they lost track of). This is software, and they got out of the software business when they sold off that division to Vivendi.

Edit: Beaten by Nanabanana

Yes it is copyright infringement.
Though considering how none of the involved rightsholder had any interest in getting the problem sorted out to get the game released again (which Night Dive tried to do)..who should care that this technically is copyright infringement?

The owner of the product doesn't want to benefit from it, but also keep the world from seeing it again (though not out of any other reason than "I don't care about the game." and don't even want to look which parts of it I own - if any")

Also, this is not new. This has been available for months and no one has yet sent a take down notice, so it's pretty clear the potential rights holders don't care. I had hoped this would force one or all of them to figure out the legal limbo this game is in because Night Dive Studio has the source code and wanted to update and re-release them, but they couldn't get the rights to do so.

Hmm... they are legal when their distribution is approved and authorized by the rights owners. But I'd say almost all such cracks were born illegal. What's more interesting is copyright ownership on the actual crack portion of the code - if cracking itself is not illegal but distribution is, the crack code is copyrighted itself and the rights owners of the game are not necessarily entitled to distributing it.