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Despite GOG's best efforts this classic Dune RTS is trapped in 5-way licensing hell

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Despite GOG's best efforts this classic Dune RTS is trapped in 5-way licensing hell

Westwood Studios' 1992 classic Dune 2: The Building of a Dynasty – alternately known as Battle for Arrakis depending on the version – is one of the most important games ever made. It laid the foundation for the entire real-time strategy genre, and everything from Blizzard's Warcraft to Westwood's own Command & Conquer took direct inspiration from it.

So why has it never gotten a modern re-release? As it turns out, making a game based on a movie based on a novel that's now been adapted into a different movie with a different tie-in game creates something of an IP nightmare. Marcin Paczynski, senior business development and partnerships manager at GOG, has been trying to unpack this mess for some time.

"This is one of the holy grails," Paczynski tells GamesRadar+. "It's on the top of my list, my personal one, because this is a game that I have a lot of nostalgia for. The situation is a good example of how bad it can get with the licensing situation of a game."

Dune 2 was developed by Westwood Studios, which was eventually acquired by EA. "So currently, Electronic Arts has the game code, the assets, all of the rights to those things, and all the materials around the game," Paczynski explains. "But of course, they do not own the IP. The problem with the IP is that it is not directly owned by the Herbert Foundation, because the games were not based on the books; they were actually based on the movie from 1984.


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