Atari in response to NWN1 furor says “Hey! Look, over there!”

Posted on June 6, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 6 Comments

Atari’s response to FiringSquad about recent yanking of support for NWN1: Hey, uh, fans can still make modules and, uh, NWN2 is way cool!

As a comment to the story said:

When someone answers your question with the answers to a completely different question; you can be sure their answer is no.

Obsidian’s community rep, meanwhile, hinted broadly on their forums that Atari wasn’t at fault in the matter (which would leave Wizards of the Coast as the owner of the D&D license). Speculation on the Quarter to Three thread is that this is due to cash-strapped Atari’s ditching its publishing rights to D&D, which would not be amusing news in some quarters (and would also make publishing NWN2 um, somewhat difficult…)

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  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless Gamer

    Blah blah blah.

    NWN 2 better kick ass :)

  • http://www.gamingtrend.com Jason Ballew

    Lucky for me, Obsidian’s going to be showing off NWN2 at A-Kon this weekend, so I’ll get to see it up close, yay.

  • Bob

    The idea that WotC/Hasbro has some magical power over Atari customer support cracks me up. Occam’s Razor people, it’s either Bioware or Atari who made that decision…probably both, in agreement, after long discussions.

  • http://www.psychochild.org/ Psychochild

    The idea that WotC/Hasbro has some magical power over Atari customer support cracks me up.

    It shouldn’t. Atari has a license agreement to publish D&D games granted by WotC/Hasbro. If WotC/Hasbro decides to revoke the license, then they’re SOL. Depending on the details of the license, Hasbro probably has the ability to veto specific games. Releasing “official” expansions almost certainly falls under this. So, if Hasbro decides they don’t want Atari supporting NWN1 anymore, they probably have to comply. Even if it isn’t explicitly stated in the license agreement, pissing off the license holder for what’s almost certainly a profitable franchise isn’t exactly a great idea.

    So, yeah, it could be WotC/Hasbro being the bad guy here. Of course, it is just as likely to be a Bioware/Atari decision as well. Although, given how close Bioware was to releasing another official patch/content, I suspect it wasn’t exactly in Bioware’s best interest to do so.

    Some thoughts,

  • Silvanis

    The only scenario that makes sense to me is that Atari is trying to sell the D&D liscence. Assuming they have someone interested in it (and I’m sure SOMEONE is interested), they need to work out timing and legal issues before transfering the liscence…basically, Atari would want to keep the right to publish NWN 2, but isn’t going to go through the hassles involved in negotiating the rights to an expansion pack for an “old” game.

    Either that, or Oblivion is in for a BIG surprise….

  • Silvanis

    err, Obsidian…one of those O words. I shouldn’t post at 2am, probably : )