Light-hearted spy thriller The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a bit of a forgotten gem, a funny, smart shooter that showcased developer Monolith at its inventive best.
For a while it looked like we might be getting a remastered version of the game, but sadly republishing experts Night Dive Studios’ recent attempts to secure the rights for a remastered version have ended in disappointment.
The biggest problem Night Dive faced was in working out just who owned the rights to the game. Original developer Monlith is now owned by Warner Bros, and the game’s publisher Fox Interactive was first purchased by Vivendi, then entered a partnership with Activision.
That complex corporate web proved impossible to untangle. “We started talking with Warner Bros. and Warner Bros. said, ‘Well, it wouldn’t be possible to do a deal with you because Activision has some ownership of this and we’d have to have them involved in this process,” explained Night Dive’s director of business development Larry Kuperman to Kotaku recently.
“So we went back to Activision and, [after] numerous correspondence going back and forth, they replied that they thought they might have some rights, but that any records predated digital storage. So we’re talking about a contract in a box someplace.”
As far as Night Dive was concerned, the company with the strongest claim on the license was Warner Bros. Night Dive filed for the NOLF trademark, as did WB, but it turned out that Warner had no real interest in re-releasing the game, but were instead simply protecting their license by contesting the studio’s claim. Nigh Dive tried to contact WB and arrange some sort of deal, but the publisher eventually replied saying that they weren’t interested in a remake.
It’s all a bit confusing, but the gist is this; Night Dive is no longer attempting to re-release No One Lives Forever. Where exactly the rights to the game lie isn’t clear, which leaves NOLF in a kind of corporate red-tape limbo. Possibly forver. A real shame.
