Discworld rerelease is 'on the cards' according to the original game's director, but is 'a complicated process' because King Charles may own 50% of the IP rights
At a time when classic PC games are more accessible than ever, the Discworld trilogy of adventure games has remained frustratingly elusive. Based on Terry Pratchett's long-running comic fantasy series, the three adventure games—Discworld, Discworld 2, and Discworld Noir, were developed by Perfect Entertainment and released between 1995 and 1999. Perfect shut down shortly after Noir launched, and ever since the trilogy has been abandonware.
But hope lies on the horizon. In a recent interview with Time Extension, Perfect's cofounder Gregg Barnett revealed that a rerelease is being pursued. «I don't want to give you a scoop, but a Discworld rerelease may happen,» Barnett said when asked if any companies had approached him about the subject. «It's on the cards. It may happen. And then it could advance to new versions of them.»
The reason Barnett says «may» rather than «will» comes down to complications regarding who owns the rights to the games in the UK. «It turns out that 50% reverted to me as the creator because the company Perfect Entertainment has been closed for 10 years,» he said.
The other half of the rights, meanwhile, belong to… King Charles?
«Whenever something closes in the UK, intellectual property rights revert 50% to the original creator and 50% to the Crown, which is King Charles,» Barnett said. «So yes, there have been discussions and something may be happening down the track—a rerelease or a remaster. But it's obviously a complicated process when you're dealing with the Crown.»
Barnett is apparently referring to UK law around «bona vacantia,» or vacant goods, which would apply to intellectual property if it was wasn't transferred to another owner before a company was dissolved. In those cases, the government does indeed take control of the rights, though there's seemingly no mention of the rights being split with the original creator on the UK's bona vacantia website.
The Crown's potential role in this tangled situation was apparently a surprise to
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