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Who owns the rights to Myth 1/2 these days? I was thinking if its you guys, maybe it can be put on sale on the App Store?? is that possible?

The last we heard was they are owned by Take 2. At some point we (magma) were in talks with Nightdive studios to bring the game back to market. This was like 5 years ago or something. They were going to negotiate the rights with T2 and we would do the development to upgrade the graphics and bring the game to steam or whatever platform. Unfortunately the negotiations between T2 and Nightdive broke down, I don't really recall the reason (or maybe I was never told what it was), probably T2 was asking for too much money.

Melekor, do you think we could look into this again? I am curious what there asking price is. I honestly don't think there will be much of a profit in this game as far as sales go so I don't see how the franchise could be worth very much money. I would think the money to remaster it would probably cost more than the profit from sales. That being said I think this game is a masterpiece and would like it to be more available and friendly for newer players. Any way to get my friends the opportunity to easily enjoy it is greatly appreciated.

:: taps walls, brushes dust off mantlepiece :: There's a distinct lack of alcohol in this place... Might want to get onto that...

Jeoku: You're asking the question the wrong way around. Don't bother thinking about how the game isn't much value to Take 2 Interactive. They know it's not a valuable commodity... Or at least, they know that to make it valuable again they would have to put 5 metric shitonnes of marketing behind it, and that's not a feasible strategy for a 20-year old PC game. Arcade games: sure. Simple graphics, easy to play, simple strategies, just keep ratcheting up the speed, power or numbers of the challenge. Modern PC games: sure. They're modern, and novelty is a stong attractive quality.

But games that came on the scene after the Golden Age of video games fall into this black hole. They can only be resurrected by porting them to new platforms (Steam, PS4, etc), and that requires lots of money, resource and time.

As soon as you ask for the rights to the game, they're not going to say "Sure: it's valueless to us." They're going to say "Not unless you pay us a huge amount of cash, because it DOES have value to YOU, and you might make it rain with this property!"

If you want to buy this IP, go in with a lawyer, expect to pay 5-6 figures, and be prepared to invest a buttload of time in porting and testing, as Melekor outlined.

That's the easy, expensive part. The difficult part is recognizing the efforts of past Magma devs from Infininight, Iron Duke and Myrd all the way to modern devs. Because let's face it: on paper, all that's happened is a transfer of ownership. You might suddenly think "Shit, that cost a BUNDLE - I'mma have to charge SOMETHING to get a roof over my head and a plate of food down my gullet." And we're back to square one.

Oh trust me I understand Take 2 will ask for a but load of money. I play one of their games NBA 2k all the time and it is painfully obvious they are more interested in money then making a good and enjoyable game. I am just curious how ridiculous of a price they asked for. Honestly what I would like is a remaster of at least the first two games and if that went well the third one also. I am curious what kind of agreement Magma had with Nightdive Studios. I completely understand getting it to happen is a longshot and would take the stars to align.

As I said I'm not even sure if that was the reason why the negotiations broke down. Now that I think about it, I probably didn't forget, but most likely wasn't told because all the details of their negotiations would have been confidential.

There was no formal agreement between us and Nightdive, that would have been negotiated afterwards if they had been able to get the rights. But basically the idea was to hire us as devs since we were already familiar with the code and because we have the most up to date version.

As for trying again, well, given how much success Nightdive has had with so many other games, it seems pretty clear they know what they are doing. I trust they did a good job even without knowing the details. Trying to do it ourselves isn't something I'm interested in personally anymore, nor do I have the time or money right now.

I know Myrd has said in the past he would be interested in buying the rights, not sure how he feels about it lately though.

From memory, new financial quarter, Take 2 changed their mind.

Even the person we were chatting with at Take 2 was annoyed that it ended that way, he still wanted to see it re-released.

These last two posts are tantalizing points to leave this on...

Jon, how do you know the Take2 guy wanted myth sold/traded/re-released? Were you part of the negotiations?

I think you guys should take contact with them again and tell them you been updating and having this community for years and would love to own the rights so you could freely update and change the game to your liking for yourselves and the 'small community'

also, when you get a price, hopefully if you put it like that to them, they don't see you as someone who's trying to make a fortune of their game, but just as a small group trying to improve what's already there without having to worry about being sued or whatnot.

so when you get a price, you guys start a kick starter which im sure people will chip in to help you guys buy the rights.. it would be awesome if it made a comeback on the apple App Store, steam...

Have you guys ever thought about partnering with Bungie now that they’re an independent studio again, or even some ex-Bungie guys, to try to buy out the rights? I wonder whether Marty O’Donnell might be interested. He is presumably loaded, and no doubt Myth has sentimental value, since (a) I’m pretty sure it’s the first game he made music and sound for, and (b) his dad was the voice of the dwarves.

Reiginoob wrote:Have you guys ever thought about partnering with Bungie now that they’re an independent studio again, or even some ex-Bungie guys, to try to buy out the rights? I wonder whether Marty O’Donnell might be interested. He is presumably loaded, and no doubt Myth has sentimental value, since (a) I’m pretty sure it’s the first game he made music and sound for, and (b) his dad was the voice of the dwarves.

that's an awesome idea and suggestion!

So it's unlikely they'd want to sell it without a huge amount of money. We're talking 6-7 figures.

Think about how XCOM went from being 'some 90s game' to being one of the multimillion sellers, across PC, Consoles, Tablets etc. Them holding onto an IP they _might_ at some point use, is worth more than whatever we could provide.

Teaming up with Bungie or Marty O'Donnell would likely just inflate said price. If there is anyone they can charge more for the IP, it's the people that want it, and have money.

Jon God wrote:So it's unlikely they'd want to sell it without a huge amount of money. We're talking 6-7 figures.

Think about how XCOM went from being 'some 90s game' to being one of the multimillion sellers, across PC, Consoles, Tablets etc. Them holding onto an IP they _might_ at some point use, is worth more than whatever we could provide.

Teaming up with Bungie or Marty O'Donnell would likely just inflate said price. If there is anyone they can charge more for the IP, it's the people that want it, and have money.

that's why they should contact them and talk to them in the way i mentioned earlier

Right, because it's simple as that.




It's not happening. I'm sorry, it's just not. Myth as a brand with a potential future is dead. This isn't negative, it's just reality. I've seen this brought up on the forums every so often for 15+ years, and they all go the same way:
- Someone asks about Myth's rights and how it can be purchased/licensed/updated to actively promote and sell it again (this has included some small companies as well)
- Various people say that's a good idea and it should be done
- Person from dev team at the time explains actual situation with TakeTwo
- Idea is dropped
- Cycle repeats

I have no doubt you’re right about the value of Myth as a brand for new / remastered games. The best outcome would just be for the original games to be released as freeware so that we can try to organically grow the multiplayer community without trying to convince someone to drop five bucks and bother waiting for an eBay copy to arrive in the post (assuming they even have a computer with an optical drive), or encourage them to engage in piracy (notwithstanding T2’s apparent apathy).

Hard to try to promote tournaments or whatever beyond the four walls of myrgard.com when you don’t have a straightforward answer to the question, ‘I might be interested in this - how do I check this game out and give it a go?’

How you convince T2 to do this is a mystery to me. If they’re worried about hypothetical profits from future releases, releasing the originals as freeware wouldn’t stop them from doing that.