Since GOG.com’s founding in 2008, their customers had been clamoring for them to re-release one game in particular: the 1997 point-and-click adventure Blade Runner. “It’s a great game, and one of the most wished-for titles of all time on our community wishlist,” Business Development Director Mark Hill said.
The thing is, the GOG team wasn’t in need of any persuading. Over the years, GOG has made it their mission to preserve and re-release a number of retro games, including Diablo, Stranglehold, and entries in the Monkey Island adventure game series. They loved Blade Runner as much as their customers and were just as enthusiastic about reviving the title for contemporary audiences.
The obstacles, however, were manifold. Firstly, the IP rights were scattered and difficult to track down. Secondly, the studio that developed the game, Westwood Studios — best known for franchises like Command & Conquer and Lands of Lore — had shut down in early 2003. The game’s source code had been seemingly lost to the ether, never to be touched again.
There’s a reason why Blade Runner had accrued over 35,000 community wishlist votes on GOG. At the time of its release, Blade Runner was considered an exemplar of technical and creative achievement and garnered the Interactive Achievement Award for “PC Adventure Game of the Year.”
Its critical success is due in large part to Westwood’s ambition. Determined to deviate from producing a straightforward adaptation of the 1982 film, Westwood opted to write an original story that still shared the film’s milieu, atmosphere, and tone.
They also sought to represent characters in 3D using motion-captured actors, all against a game world that progressed in real-time. Unwilling to compromise their creative vision, Westwood developed their own voxel-based technology to combat the hardware limitations of the time.
The hard work paid off. Even by today’s standards, the game’s stark neon lighting, striking cinematography, and jazzy, noirish pacing continue to captivate. Random elements and player choices produce different storylines with every playthrough, while thirteen separate endings await at the game’s finish. Years later, Blade Runner remains memorable.
Yet as PC hardware continued to evolve, Blade Runner became less and less accessible, primarily for people who never got their hands on the game’s original four-disc package. “For years everyone, including us, thought it was impossible to release due to scattered rights, technical issues, and lost source code,” Global Communications Director Marcin Traczyk said.
But GOG didn’t give up. With Blade Runner 2049 on the horizon, Hill decided to reach out to Alcon Entertainment, the film’s production company, to inquire about the IP rights for the game. “I literally went over to their office and asked to talk to someone about Blade Runner and GOG.com,” Hill said. (“I don’t recommend this,” Hill added.)
Fortunately, Alcon Entertainment was amenable to helping them procure the necessary rights to re-release the game, kickstarting a process that would last several years. Now, GOG just needed to address the other elephant in the room: the case of the missing source code.
GOG turned to the team behind ScummVM, a program dedicated to recreating the game engines necessary for running adventure games from the ‘80s and ‘90s, for help. “Making Blade Runner work on modern systems was a community project started by one of their members 8 years ago,” Hill said. “He started by tinkering with the code and digging up unused or cut-out content, like dialogue lines or entire story branches.”
It was a massive undertaking that required years of labor and herculean effort, but eventually, ScummVM managed to get the game working. With ScummVM’s restoration project complete and the legal barriers dissolved, GOG finally released a version of Blade Runner that doesn’t require the physical discs to play late last year.
Blade Runner exemplifies GOG’s efforts to prevent games from being forgotten by time or obsolescence. “The idea for GOG.com was born from a passion for games and necessity — old floppies and discs with our favorite classic games stopped working as the time passed, with new hardware and operating systems replacing old ones,” Traczyk said. “It's similar to what has happened to the first movies over a century ago — no one cared for the new medium and everyone pressed forward without thinking of preserving their achievements for the future.”
Without the help of digital preservation initiatives, many games could suffer the same fate that Blade Runner almost did. “That's why for over a decade now, we're operating a DRM-free platform for classic and indie games while also fixing and re-releasing classic games,” Traczyk said. “We have some achievements that we're very proud of, like Blade Runner, but there's still more to be done and many people waiting to once again enjoy the games of their youth.”
Blade Runner is available for PC today.