Nightdive Studio recently announced that Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition has been delayed indefinitely. The reason seems to be because the source code for the game has been lost.
If the source code does still exist, it, might be with EA, as they snatched up original developer Westwood in 1998.
However, it seems EA isn’t too willing to dig around for it.
Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick spoke to Eurogamer and said they’ve tried to work with EA to have them find the code, but EA has been difficult to work with.
“We’ve had some discussions with EA about what else is in the vault they found regarding Blade Runner, and we haven’t been able to get a clear answer, and even if there was something, it’s very unlikely they would release it to us for legal reasons, mostly, which is a bit of a disappointment, because we were hoping to at least get the original audio recordings. So we’re basically working off what was in the original game at this point and not having access to any original stuff. I’ve been led to believe that there’s some stuff but no-one will ever know.”
Nightdive is still moving forward on the project, and they will have to reverse-engineer the entire thing, hence the delay. They noted that this method will take a lot more time, and with so much work ahead of them, they cannot give a timeframe for release/