Why is Star Trek Elite force not on steam?

I didn’t know where to ask this in the steam forums. Elite force is one of the best Star Trek games and I’m a little surprised it’s not on Steam or GOG for that matter. Is it because it was made by Raven? I know a lot of their games had to be taken off steam, but I was wondering if Elite force was ever on Steam to begin with or if we’ll even see it hopefully.

It's because it was published by Activision, so like Hexen II: Portal of Praevus, Heretic II, and Wolfenstein (2009) (which was on Steam at one point but got removed), it's very unlikely that it will be made available digitally.

Maybe it's because Steam is only allowed to have one copy running at a time, and they started a second copy and the License agreement terminated. =)

20 minutes ago, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

It's because it was published by Activision, so like Hexen II: Portal of Praevus, Heretic II, and Wolfenstein (2009) (which was on Steam at one point but got removed), it's very unlikely that it will be made available digitally.

I’m a little confused on what happened with Raven and Steam. Was there bad blood somewhere or what?

2 hours ago, Spooner5020 said:

I’m a little confused on what happened with Raven and Steam. Was there bad blood somewhere or what?

No, I think it's basically the fact that Activision Happened.

Activision pretty much relocated Raven to CoD assistance. Their last original game, Singularity, was a decade ago. Activision has no interest in doing anything with their old IPs or games sadly.

Your answer is (most likely) multi-layered.

1. Star Trek is its own license, currently owned by CBS (as far as I know, feel free to correct me on this)

2. Elite Force was developed by Raven Software, but that will have little to do with it being available anywhere.

3. It was published by Activision, that is who will get to decide where and when and how to sell it.

So think of it like this, Activision owns Elite Force, CBS owns Star Trek, so in order for it to be sold anywhere again through official stores, both Activision and CBS need to make a special agreement together. My guess is Activision isn't very concerned with an old Star Trek FPS that'd they have to pay CBS royalties again just to re-release it to the public.

I'd recommend just... acquiring it another way. Or pray it appears on GOG one day, they seem to have a knack for getting these sorts of things moving, but it takes a lot of time to make these triple A companies care about their backlogs, especially licensed games.

E:

@Lila Feuer Funnily enough, a good chunk of Raven's backlog isn't actually owned by Activision at all!

It's an injustice that the world doesn't get to conveniently play the awesome and sorely underrated Heretic II.

4 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

It's an injustice that the world doesn't get to conveniently play the awesome and sorely underrated Heretic II.

I freaking love Heretic 2. Thank goodness I own a copy.

#BringBackRavenSoftware