I started to get into the Riddick Movie series recently, and wanted to take a look at Butcher Bay. Only to find that it wasn't on GOG anymore. Can anyone tell me what happened, and if it will ever be back or not.

It escaped :v

We have a bunch of mercs looking into it though, it might be back at some point, but that Riddick is a tricky one to catch.



In all seriousness, licensing issues (expiring) most probably.

As neurasthenya has said, the title was removed from catalogue sometimes ago.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/chronicles_of_riddick_assault_on_dark_arena_removal

It's a shame because Butcher Bay was an EXCELLENT title and Dark Athena... well it was free with the purchase of Butcher Bay ;) (Yes, I know it was the other way around specifically, but I didn't buy it for Dark Athena).

when things like this happen, is the game removed from your gog library or just the store? I don't own this game so I can't check on my own account.

Just the store. If you bought it, you'd still have it, normally. It's just that you can't buy it anymore.

no matter what, what ever you buy, even if they replace it with a the same game under a new title it will remain in your library and you'll have the ability to download it.

That's the theory, anyway, but it may be wiser to keep a local back-up of your games as well, just in case. I think so far they haven't removed any games or any major bonus goodies from the libraries of users, but sooner or later there's always a first time.

The licensing rights allegedly expired and the publisher's right to sell the game along with it, so it was removed from all stores. The majority of video games that contain 3rd party licensed IP such as being based on movies, TV shows, etc. are generally licensed for 3/5/10 years or so and then the publisher loses the rights and the video game disappears from sale indefinitely in almost all cases.

There are exceptions of course, such as games that the publisher might have negotiated lifetime/unlimited rights to sell (rare I imagine), or if a publisher renegotiates the rights to a game because it is a big seller and they want to keep it on the market and it is worth it financially (very very unlikely for most such games). Another exception is where the publisher of the game is in fact also the 3rd party IP owner as well, such as Disney owning the Star Wars franchise and also the rights to all of the Star Wars video games. Such an IP is notable and a lot of money behind it so things like Star Wars games will probably be available forever in terms of the IP (but may not be available due to technical reasons such as not working on current systems, or other reasons).

At the end of the day though, in the majority of cases one can expect games based on movies, TV shows etc. to have a 5-10 year life span maximum and then vanish from the face of the planet unless they are some massive level of epicness like Star Wars or Star Trek or similar where the franchising spans many decades of moneymakingness far beyond what the average random movie can ever hope to achieve, or the profits for licensing rights perpetually or for long periods of time would ever hope to capitalize effectively to make it worthwhile.

TL;DR - The Riddick games are unlikely to ever be available anywhere ever again.

I wonder if there there is a GOG mix with all the games that might be in danger of disappearing due to licensing right expiring. If there is one, I'm having difficulty finding it.

The only extras I remember being removed was the Atlantis ost due to them not having the rights to it, but no games have been removed from accounts. Severance: Blade of Darkness has been gone for a long time and is still playable for those that own it.

don't know about one - most likely there is no proper one as there is no big overview about the current gog catalogue and 3rd party licensing statuses - i mean it's not like all these contracts are public knowledge and well depending on how good the publishers of the games are they either way manage to inform the people beforehand or even do a big sale b4 the license expires or on the other hand even kinda forgot about the licensing themselves and then have to instantpull certain games when "suprisingly" and "suddendly" the license is expired :D

Don;t recall one but I believe if staff knows about it a head of time, they'll go ahead and start a thread here saying so.

Or at least drop a few strong hints.

I just want to say Disney and available forever don't belong in the same sentence. Disney is notorious for taking products off the market to later release and rerelease and rererelease new editions if / when they feel like, to generate artificial scarcity and hype. It's better for game rights to be owned by Meadowbrook than by Disney, because one will listen to enough money and the other can and does intentionally pass on immediate profit for the sake of maintaining oligopolistic market domination.

I don't think GOG ever had Escape from Butcher Bay. But [url=https://www.gogwiki.com/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Riddick:_Assault_on_Dark_Athena]Assault on Dark Athena[/url] was removed earlier this year.