Cold Fear Gets a Second Chance After Delisting; Other Atari IP Likely to Get Remaster Treatment
- Cold Fear returns on GOG with modern-system fixes.
- Atari is likely to eye remasters after acquiring other Ubisoft IP.
- Nightdive/Digital Eclipse are likely candidates for future reworks.
- Preservation good for games, but pricier for players.
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Back From the Dead
It’s not everyday a forgotten classic gets a second chance at popularity, and yet that’s what’s happened to Cold Fear this week. The 2005 survival horror had been available on multiple game platforms for a while, but wasn’t guaranteed to run on modern systems. It was delisted on Nov. 10, but reappeared on Nov. 25 in an updated form, but only on GOG.
Cold Fear follows a seasoned Coast Guard, Tom Hansen, as he investigates a distress call sent by a Russian whaling ship caught in a fierce Arctic storm. It soon becomes apparent that the weather isn’t the only threat as Hansen finds himself dealing with various monsters. The Cold Fear IP was recently acquired by Atari, and the company announced its return on X:
“Cold Fear is available again through GOG’s Preservation Program! The program ensures classic games remain playable on modern systems long after developer support ends. They also maintain the titles with dedicated tech support and improvements.”
We’re All in This Together
Cold Fear is now only available on GOG, as it’s been added to that company’s Preservation Program. When Eneba spoke to Piotr Gnyp about the Program he said that games added to it will always be available and that they’ll work on modern PCs, and Cold Fear looks to be following through on this statement: it has full support with Windows 10 and 11, added support for integrated graphics cards, and added support for modern controllers as just a few examples of the tweaks.
While this is good news on the surface, it does mean that the game also now comes with a price bump and players who bought it on other platforms (eg. Steam or Ubisoft Connect) are stuck with the original, slightly broken version. It’s possible that the updated version will make its way over to another platform, but if it does there’s a pretty good chance it’ll get bundled with a proper remaster, if the recent treatment of System Shock is anything to go by.
Atari announced that it had acquired several IPs from Ubisoft in August this year: alongside Cold Fear, it got its hands on I Am Alive, Child of Eden, Grow Home, and Grow Up. In a press release at the time, Wade Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Atari, said “Ubisoft and Atari both have a legacy of crafting worlds that players can fall in love with – games that resonate with generations of players not just for how they played, but for how they made us feel.”
“We’re excited to reintroduce these titles while also exploring ways to expand and evolve these franchises.”
The Future of Classic Games
Atari acquired the System Shock remake studio Nightdive in 2023. Eneba spoke with Nightdive’s CEO, Stephen Kick, who said that the partnership has been good for his studio as well as Digital Eclipse, another remaster/remake-focused studio under Atari.
“There’s been times, and even more recently, where we’ll talk to a publisher about a specific game or an IP and the whole range of games that use that IP will get offered to us. And we’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, well we can do the shooter and then Digital Eclipse can do the side scroller, or the other games in the series because that’s their focus.’ They do more of that kind of stuff, like the collections.”
It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Nightdive will eventually remaster Cold Fear as it’s already worked on another forgotten horror classic: the 2002 game of The Thing. Or perhaps it gets handed to Digital Eclipse.
At the very least, gamers should expect the other IP now owned by Atari to disappear from gaming platforms, as the company’s now demonstrated its business plan: remove the original, rework it to some degree, and then get it listed with GOG (which also has a concrete link with Nightdive) for more money, or bundled with a new version at an even higher price. Ultimately, this is a good thing for game preservation, but not gamers’ wallets.
Cold Fear, Hot Action
Cold Fear was developed by Darkworks, a now-defunct studio based in Paris that also made Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. The studio was also working on Alive, a post-apocalyptic survival game, but it was taken off them by publisher Ubisoft in 2008, and handed to an in-house Shanghai studio.
The version that was released in 2012 had the name I Am Alive and the same core concept, but was reported to be a completely different take on what Darkworks had initially made. As Darkworks shut down in 2011, gamers thought they’d never get to see the version the French studio made outside of concept art. However, a video was found on YouTube of game footage and this occasionally resurfaces in gaming articles…like this one right now:
As for Cold Fear, it debuted shortly after Resident Evil 4 and as such ended up as an overlooked “clone,” despite featuring an unusual setting (a huge ship that rocks and moves during actual gameplay) and a believable protagonist. It was also set to receive a film adaptation way back in 2006, but after an initial announcement there was no further news.
Gamers hankering for a new horror video game movie might not want to hold their breath, as while Atari might want to “expand and evolve” its IP there’s been no indication that movies or TV are on the slate, although this hasn’t stopped former Cold Fear publisher Ubisoft from moving forward with a Far Cry TV show.
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