No One Lives Forever might be dead

The 60’s adventures of English spy Cate Archer in No One Lives Forever and it sequel are two of my very favourite FPS experiences; thanks to the genius fusion of stealth, shooting and irreverent humour. If, like me, you’ve been waiting for a sequel, the bad news is you could well be waiting forever.

Speaking on his One of Swords videocast, Activision community manager Dan Amrich revealed the unlikelihood of a sequel, or even reboot – because it seems that nobody actually knows who holds the rights to the IP.

“The person that I normally talk to about this stuff does not believe that we currently the rights,” Amrich says. “They’ve never seen it, they’ve never been given the permission to put that stuff on Good Old Games. He said, basically, ‘If we had it, I would love to be able to reissue those old games.’ So, 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. Uh, so, unfortunately, all I can definitively say is that at this time I do not believe that Activision has the rights to No One Lives Forever.”

The original game was developed by Monolith (now owned by Warner) an published by Fox Interactive, acquired in 2003 by Vivendi. Its sequel was published by Vivendi’s “Sierra Entertainment” brand, which should place it now under Activision’-Blizzard’s stable – but it’s possible that Monolith still holds the rights.

Unfortunately, until somebody knows for sure, work on any sort of sequel is unlikely to happen. And that’s a damned shame.

Last Updated: April 8, 2013