System Shock 2 Coming to GOG Tomorrow, Interview

You might have noticed a countdown on GOG’s page, which should rouse more than a suspicion in case you read the recent rumors of a System Shock 2 release on GOG. But if that isn’t enough, you’ll be pleased to know that Rock, Paper, Shotgun officially confirmed it with nothing less than an interview with Night Dive Studios’ Stephen Kick and GOG’s Guillaume Rambourg.

Here’s a snip:

RPS: The story of the System Shock rights and trademark has frustrated people for years. As I understand it and I may well be wrong Looking Glass retained the rights while EA held the trademark. When Looking Glass ceased to be, the rights passed to Meadowbrook Insurance Group and without both, the series cannot be revived. What negotiations, with any parties involved, have taken place in order to secure digital distribution rights?

Stephen Kick (Night Dive): The rights are still held in a very complicated tangle and going into all of it makes for very dry reading. The short version is that negotiations began in October of last year. I pitched the rights-holder with the focus being on the digital distribution of System Shock 2 and as much to my surprise as anyone’s, possibly here we are today.

Guillaume Rambourg (GOG.com): We, of course, have been working on getting System Shock 2 on GOG.com more or less since we started operations, and we were absolutely thrilled when Stephen contacted us from Night Dive indicating that he was able to secure these rights.

…

RPS: Can you go into any detail on the difficulty of ensuring the game works on modern PCs? It has been a common reason for people to keep old machines running.

Rambourg: As we mentioned, there are a number of community-made efforts that help a lot with stability on newer systems; they’ve pointed the way for us, and the game runs pretty much flawlessly on Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8. Our most recent build has gone through all of our test team PCs without a hitch, and the game is definitely polished up and ready for its time in the limelight again.

Great news all around! I’m fully expecting this to become GOG’s top seller by a large margin at release.