Who Owns The Rights To No One Lives Forever? No One Seems To Know

When it comes to shooters, Monolith had a good run — Blood, FEAR, Shogo, Condemned… just to name a few. Then there’s No One Lives Forever with its compelling protagonist Cate Archer. So, uh, why haven’t we seen a reboot, or even a re-release of the original games? It might be because no one’s sure who owns the IP.

It seems like an odd situation: the rights to a game, especially one that saw a good chunk of critical and commercial success like NOLF, would be hard to misplace, surely? But as Activision social media manager Dan Amrich discovered, tracking down the franchise’s owner was not an easy task… or a fruitful one.

Amrich retells his attempts to uncover the truth, as it were, in his One Of Swords podcast. Here’s a snippet, courtesy of Blue’s News:

The person that I normally talk to [at Activision] about this stuff does not believe that we currently [own] the rights … that leaves the question if Activision no longer has the rights to No One Lives Forever, who does?

Monolith was the developer that handled those games, and they are now part of WB. So I thought, maybe at the time when Activision was saying ‘we’ll keep these, we’ll leave these, we’ll sell these, whatever,’ maybe Monolith stepped up and took their IP back. So I contacted a friend at Monolith… and he doesn’t know.

I had a quick poke around and discovered Monolith’s own site lists “Fox Interactive” as the original publisher of the game — it’s possible it ended up with the rights somehow. That said, Sierra (now Activision Blizzard) was responsible for the sequel.

Kind of a shame this great IP has been misplaced. I’m sure a modern do-over would be much appreciated.

One of Swords TV: No One Lives Forever rights [One Of Swords, via Blue’s News]

Image: Monolith / Activision


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