ok to start. this might be a retarded thread, and nonsense, and I might be an idiot for making it. so you can tell me am an idiot or not comment I wouldn't take it personally it would actually be funny

ok now we got that out of the way lets start

now. as a kid I really enjoyed PS1 and PS2 , the variety of games was unprecedented, you walked into a local no name gamestore and had so many choices tens of not close to a hundred game on the rack and many are new every month

games back then were cheap and easy to make, so you saw an explosion, THQ, sierra and universal, lucas arts and a bunch of other studios coexisted with ubisoft, EA and activision. also rockstar

Last gen happened and we went to hd era. games became hard to make. and many indiependent devs died (at least 66% , or two thirds of devs died or got bought out by big devs, namely activision EA and Ubisoft, and Bethesda to some degree)

tens of these IPs are no longer being made, and most of them even if were great, will probably never see the light of day again. there is no interest from these publishers to invest in them because the few bogstandard games already sell so much

my question is. should somehow these companies give these IPs up to indiependent devs with the ability to make those games, like say insomniac games or CD project red.?  yeah we don't have many big indie devs left.  or somehow legally have it be possibly easier to get those IPs

legally currently publishers have no obligation to give up an IP or a license to anything they own. even if they never use it.

Yes and this is already happening to some degree. Nintendo, for example, outsources Metroid games for quite a while now already because it seems like they don't have the mojo themselves anymore. Many other of their franchises are taken care of by smaller studios as well like Luigi's Mansion.

I believe that creating a game in a popular franchises is much more than just putting some assets together that have already been know in this particular franchise and call it a day. The success of a game is closely linked to the people developing it and their idea of how it should be made. Now if a bigger publisher lacks the fitting people to create a specific game, the publisher should try to look out for people who can do this job.

You remember the thread from yesterday when we discussed whether or not it was OK to pirate a game or not ? 

The funny thing about "copyright protection" is that "it grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for use and distribution" but the good news is that concepts do not remain exclusive to copyright holders ...

Which further begs the question, do indies really need an existing IP to advertise their games when they could create spiritual successors instead ? 

No, and they would never let this happen, even if it was a thing. Publishers would simply push out some quick, garbage product for whatever IP they were about to forfeit, and reset the clock. Not unlike what Fox did with their last Fantastic Four movie, to keep it from reverting back to Marvel. Companies don't like losing properties they own, even if they are just sitting on them.

To each case different handling: something like Shadow Hearts could go either way if given to some side developer, but I imagine making good on the IP would be difficult.

On the other hand, you have something like Sonic Mania, which is recognized as one of the finest Sonic games in recent times.

So, yeah.

I think if the dev never created the idea than i dont see a problem however if the dev created the idea and its theres than no. They have every right to keep it. If its like a movie license than i am pretty sure companies have to renew the license every so often.

Companies shouldn't be forced to use or sell their IPs if they don't want to.

should they? yes. will they? no.

No. This will only result in publishers milking their current big IPs to death even more in fear of losing them.

Yeah I knew it was dumb. but I also meant games that have to have been abandoned for a significant period of time
like 10 years