A little curiosity about SWAT 4

[|MYT|szogyenyi]

So PC Gamer just came up with a very good article about old games and their rights, and i just found a section about SWAT 4 and the SWAT rights.

A spinoff of the Police Quest series, SWAT 4 was developed by Irrational Games and published by Vivendi Universal and Sierra Entertainment.

"The IP holder for SWAT4 was Sierra who was part of Vivendi at the time," SWAT 4 designer Paul Hellquist told PC Gamer. "Vivendi then sold off all of their interactive stuff and Sierra disappeared. I’m not sure where the IP ownership ended up. Activision has started up a Sierra label again, but I don’t know if they just got the rights to use the name or if they also got the IPs."

When reached for comment, an Activision representative said the company's legal department was unable to devote resources into seeing if the company had a claim over the SWAT 4 IP. Given that Activision's legal team couldn't even be bothered to look into the issue, it doesn't seem like a SWAT 4 resurrection is very high on the company's list of priorities. Major bummer.

Sad story. Maybe we won't get another game just like SWAT 4, but hope dies last. If you are interested, you can read the whole article right here.

[|MYT|Trollzilla]

It's just name. Game genre, mechanics and theme aren't claimable IP in the light of law. Besides, I've never seen a good tactical shooter by Activision.

[|MYT|szogyenyi]

Unfortunately Takedown isn't as good as it should be (and as it was advertised) and nowadays there is no tactical shooter like SWAT 4. We could mention Ghost Recon ofc but it's a bit different and i think most of the gamers better know the SWAT title and the game itself, so it could be a huge advantage for Activision to reuse the name. Sadly, Acti doesn't give a **** about it, because they are focusing only 1 COD/year and other shitty movie based, licensed games. All my hope in the indie developers and maybe someday we will get the "sequel" of SWAT 4.

We could talk about Siege, but it's more like a Counter Strike based, competitive shooter...

[|MYT|dimonkey]

We could talk about Siege, but it's more like a Counter Strike based, competitive shooter...

That is the problem and will continue to be the problem. Since gaming has gone so "main stream" publishers are just after big bucks so just keep spinning off the same block buster games over and over. That coupled with the fact that most people want a casual game that they can drop in and out of means that niche games like SWAT 4 are unlikely to reappear.

Any chance that exists would only come from the indie developers and having been burned by Takedown's promise you wonder what community exists for such a game.

Sad

[|MYT|Trollzilla]

Insurgency is as close as you can get when it comes to tactical shooters in CQB. Unforgiving as hell.

[|MYT|dimonkey]

Insurgency is as close as you can get when it comes to tactical shooters in CQB. Unforgiving as hell.

Yeah it is pretty good insurgency.

[|MYT|Beerbelott]

I do not know where all this information comes from, but reading Wikipedia, I understand that although Sieera stopped developing and doing business at different times, the ownership if its brand (and thus its intellectual properties) remained owned by Vivendi, which evetually merged with Activision.

Sierra earned some new ones in 2005 as a publisher when no development whatsoever was done there.

To my understanding, Activision has all the required cards in its hands to successfully reboot Sierra (again).
Now, does that mean anything for the old niche franchise SWAT is? I hope they will see the potential, knowing people still play the 4th opus.

However, all things considered, SWAT 4 is a niche: overall the fanbase is not really big. The studio could decide to use some more popular franchises to (quickly) make money.
The fact is there is no good tactical FPS except for our beloved SWAT 4. That could be an asset ruling in our favor.

[|MYT|dimonkey]

I do not know where all this information comes from, but reading Wikipedia, I understand that although Sieera stopped developing and doing business at different times, the ownership if its brand (and thus its intellectual properties) remained owned by Vivendi, which evetually merged with Activision.

Actually yeah I recall that Activision Blizzard owned the rights to SWAT 4's brand.


So maybe there is a potential for World of SWATcraft in the future! It could new IP for when they can't push anymore WoW expansions. :p

[Wes]

I read that the new sierra will not create the games but its more made to support indie makers to get there game out there, atleast what im getting from this

http://www.sierra.com/

[|MYT|Beerbelott]

I read some articles dealing with how to deal with old games requiring network communication.

The EFF made a proposal in July, 2014 towards freeing those abandoned games so it would be possible to drop the copyright and allow everyone to modify them.
Surprisingly, it seems game editors are not inclined to such ruling. I wonder why...

https://www.eff.org/files/2015/02/09/20 ... omment.pdf

For the moment, modding the game and publicly sharing those is tolerated because no one cares about the game. I hope Sierra will either take the franchise back on the roll or at least keep us in peace.