Nightdive Studios

Stephen Kick had been a character artist with Sony Online Entertainment but had found the desire to make his own games.[2] He took time to travel around the world bringing some video games along with him to find inspiration, but was surprised that he could not find a legal way to acquire System Shock 2, which had seemingly fallen into abandonware.[2][3] Kick began investigating the situation for this, and discovered that System Shock 2's intellectual property (IP) rights were hung up between Electronic Arts, the game's publisher, and Meadowbrook Insurance Group (a subsidiary of Star Insurance Company) which had acquired the assets to the game's developer, Looking Glass Studios, after their closure.[3] Kick approached Meadowbrook to negotiate the rights to System Shock 2 as to be able to port the game for modern systems. Meadowbrook agreed, and with that, Kick founded Night Dive Studios in late 2012 to support this effort.[2] The version was eventually released through GOG.com in February 2013, where System Shock 2 had been one of the most requested games from consumers, with other storefronts following later.[4][5]

With this release, Kick decided to continue Night Dive in similar efforts to bring back older games to modern systems.[2] In 2013, the studio released updated versions of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, a video game designed by science fiction author Harlan Ellison and based on his eponymous short story,[6] Wizardry VI, VII, and 8,[7] and two Trilobyte titles The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour.[8]

In 2014, Night Dive Studios re-released 28 titles from the Humongous Entertainment children's adventure games catalog,[9] as well as the cult classic adventure game Bad Mojo. The company also generated speculation that it might be planning to re-release The Operative: No One Lives Forever, as news sources took notice of a Night Dive Studios trademark filing that included material referencing the No One Lives Forever franchise.[10] Kick responded to these rumors by saying that the company could not comment on future releases for the time being.[11] Kick later revealed that they had indeed been working on trying to acquire the publishing rights for both No One Lives Forever and its sequel, to the point where they had the original source code to construct a remake of the title, but could not get the three companies with stake in the games' IP, Activision, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros., to negotiate the rights.[12]

2014 also saw the company's participation in the Humble Bundle series of games collections, with a Humble Bundle package in May 2014 that featured all of the company's titles through that date,[13] and a "flash sale" bundle in July that featured the company's Humongous Entertainment re-release titles.[14] In December 2014, Night Dive Studios coordinated the re-release of the 1996 first-person shooter role playing hybrid game Strife as Strife: Veteran Edition, after acquiring rights to the game. Because the game's source code had been lost, a derivative of the Chocolate Doom subproject Chocolate Strife was used as the game's engine, with its original programmers being contracted to do additional coding for the re-release. The source code of Strife: Veteran Edition has been made available under GPLv3 on GitHub by Night Dive Studios' and Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal on December 12, 2014.[15] While this was the first source code opened for a Night Dive Studios release, Kick announced his commitment in recovering, preserving and also opening of more source code in a Reddit AMA in 2016.[16]

In February 2015, Kick announced that the studio was working on re-releasing PowerSlave for digital distribution services with an added bonus of porting the Saturn version into the package. Kick also announced that he was working with the original developers of Noctropolis and the original source code and the updated package will feature remastered music, widescreen support and bug fixes.[16] On September 22, 2015, Night Dive Studios released the original System Shock in the Enhanced Edition that adds support for more resolutions and mouselook. Night Dive Studios has since announced it has acquired full rights to the System Shock series, and are considering developing a third title in the series, as well as remakes for both previous titles, working with original concept artist Robert Waters for some of the design.[1] In November 2015, Night Dive had 10 full-time employees, led by Kick as chief executive officer, his wife, Alix Banegas, as chief financial officer and Larry Kuperman as director of business development.[1] In May 2016, Night Dive Studios rebranded as Nightdive Studios.[17]

• Official website