GOG is fighting a five-way licensing nightmare to bring legendary RTS classic Dune II back to PC after 34 years

GOG is fighting to bring the classic Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty to its storefront. The game has long been absent from the video game marketplace, as Westwood Studios’ RTS was originally released for MS-DOS on CD-ROM on December 23, 1992. The DRM-free store has spent years reviving old PC titles, and Dune II is still on its waiting list, not because no one wants to buy it, but because its rights are split among five different parties.

A complex legal limbo?

GOG’s Marcin Paczynski recently said in an interview that the 1992 RTS Dune II is caught in a five-way licensing limbo. EA holds the rights to the code and assets, while the game is based on Universal Pictures’ 1984 film adaptation rather than Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. 

The late Dino De Laurentiis held partial rights to the film, not the Herbert Foundation. In addition, Legendary Pictures has an exclusive deal with Funcom covering Dune: Awakening, and Paczynski is unsure whether that exclusivity extends to Westwood’s RTS catalog.

EA, Universal, and Legendary’s rights keep Dune II off GOG’s storefront

This information comes from Marcin Paczynski, GOG’s senior business development and partnerships manager, who spoke with GamesRadar+. He said the licensing problem is partly a matter of arithmetic. As Paczynski explained, a modern re-release of Westwood’s 1992 RTS Dune II, which became a cornerstone of strategy-game history, is difficult to arrange:

“This is one of the holy grails. It’s at the top of my personal list because this is a game I have a lot of nostalgia for. The situation is a good example of how bad a game’s licensing situation can get.”

EA currently holds the rights to the game’s code, assets, and materials, along with Westwood Studios. Another factor complicating the licensing situation is that the game does not hold the Dune name itself: it was licensed from Universal Pictures’ 1984 film adaptation, not from Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. Paczynski added:

“So, currently, Electronic Arts has the game code, the assets, all of the rights to those things, and all the materials surrounding the game. But, of course, they do not own the IP. The problem is that the IP is not directly owned by the Herbert Foundation because the games were not based on the books. They were actually based on the 1984 movie. That movie was created by Universal Pictures, and its main producer was Dino De Laurentiis. The problem is that he also held part of the film license. But he died 15 years ago.”

On top of that, Legendary Pictures owns the rights to the newer films and has licensed them exclusively to Funcom, the studio behind Dune: Awakening. Paczynski does not know whether that deal extends to Westwood’s catalog, which also includes Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune.

Despite this, Paczynski isn’t ready to give up on Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, despite the uncertainty in play. He says GOG has ideas for approaching the 1992 RTS and bringing it to GOG, though its strategy for acquiring the rights is still in development.