Night Dive Studios

History

In February 2013, news broke that the rights to digital distribution of System Shock 2 had been successfully recovered after 13 years of non-availability by Night Dive Studios, at the time a newcomer to the gaming industry. Before that, the rights for the System Shock IP were caught in complications between Electronic Arts and Meadowbrook Insurance Group (a subsidiary of Star Insurance Company), the entity that acquired the assets of Looking Glass Studios on their closure, though according to a lawyer for Star Insurance, they themselves have since acquired the lingering intellectual property rights from EA. System Shock 2 was initially re-released on the GOG.com games distribution platform, known for carrying classics that had long been unavailable. Prior to the announcement of its re-release, System Shock 2 was the most user-requested game on GOG.com. Later in May 2013, System Shock 2 was also offered via Steam.

For much of 2013, Night Dive Studios exclusively offered System Shock 2, though CEO Stephen Kick suggested that an original work was being considered and that the studio was open to re-releasing other classic PC games as well.

This was realized in September 2013 with the GOG.com re-release of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, a video game designed by science fiction author Harlan Ellison and based on his eponymous short story. In October 2013, the game was also released on Steam.

In fall 2013, Night Dive Studios accelerated its release of classic games, re-releasing Wizardry VI, VII, and 8, followed by the re-release of the classic Trilobyte titles The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour.

In 2014, Night Dive Studios re-released 28 titles from the Humongous Entertainment children’s adventure games catalog, as well as the cult classic adventure game Bad Mojo. The company also generated speculation that it might be planning to re-release The Operative: No One Lives Forever, as news sources took notice of a Night Dive Studios trademark filing that included material referencing the No One Lives Forever franchise. CEO Kick responded to these rumors by saying that the company could not comment on future releases for the time being. Kick later revealed that they had indeed been working on trying to acquire the publishing rights for both No One Lives Forever and its sequel, to the point where they had the original source code to construct a remake of the title, but could not get the three companies with stake in the games' IP, Activision, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros., to negotiate the rights.

2014 also saw the company’s participation in the Humble Bundle series of games collections, with a Humble Bundle package in May 2014 that featured all of the company’s titles through that date, and a "flash sale" bundle in July that featured the company's Humongous Entertainment re-release titles.

In December 2014, Night Dive Studios coordinated the re-release of the 1996 first-person shooter role playing hybrid game Strife as Strife: Veteran Edition, after acquiring rights to the game. Because the game's source code had been lost, a derivative of the Chocolate Doom subproject Chocolate Strife was used as the game's engine, with its original programmers being contracted to do additional coding for the re-release. The source code of Strife: Veteran Edition has been made available under GPLv3 on GitHub by Night Dive Studios' and Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal on December 12, 2014. While this was the first source code opened for a Night Dive Studios release, Stephen Kick announced his commitment in recovering, preserving and also opening of more source code in a Reddit AMA in 2016.

In February 2015, it was announced by CEO Kick that they were working on re-releasing PowerSlave for digital distribution services with an added bonus of porting the Saturn version into the package. Kick also announced that he was working with the original developers of Noctropolis and the original source code and the updated package will feature remastered music, widescreen support and bug fixes.

On September 22, 2015, Night Dive Studios released the original System Shock in the Enhanced Edition that adds support for more resolutions and mouselook. Night Dive Studios has since announced it has acquired full rights to the System Shock series, and are considering developing a third title in the series, as well as remakes for both previous titles, working with original concept artist Robert Waters for some of the design.

On November 4, at Fragments of Silicon, Stephen Kick announced new upcoming releases from both, Night Dive Studios and the Retroism brand, including Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, Starlord, Forsaken and Machines: Wired for War.

On April 6, again at Fragments of Silicon, a returning Stephen Kick further confirmed that they were working on looking into the revival of the classic WARP/Kenji Eno game D which had been published by Acclaim in 1996.