Westwood Studios’ Dune 2: The Building of a Dynasty isn’t the first real-time strategy game ever made, but it is one of the earliest examples of the genre and essentially provided the blueprint for what RTS games would be moving forward, inspiring Blizzard and other studios in the process. But it seems very unlikely that this important bit of PC gaming history will get an official re-release anytime soon or be part of GOG’s preservation program.
In a new interview with GamesRadar, Marcin Paczynski, senior business development and partnerships manager at PC gaming store GOG, explained just how complicated and messy the rights are to 1992’s Dune 2. And it comes down to the influential RTS being based on a movie based on a book, from a studio owned by another company; in this case, 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,” explained Paczynski.
“But of course, they do not own the [Dune] IP. The problem with the IP is that it is not directly owned by [Dune writer Frank Herbert’s estate], because the games were not based on the books; they were actually based on the movie from 1984. That movie was created by Universal Pictures, and the main producer for that movie was [Dino De Laurentiis]. The problem is that he also has part of that movie license with him. But he died 15 years ago.”
That means De Laurentiis’ estate owns a “portion” of Dune 2 .
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