Has anyone thought of actually buying from Third Wire the rights of Strike Fighters for pc?

[MAF1247]

Considering that ThirdWire has completely abandoned any development of a sequel or update of SF2, so the engine and the core matrix of the game will stay completely unused forever, i'm asking: is there anybody that actually proposed or contacted ThirdWire to buy the engine and everything related to Strike Fighters 2 to eventually develop a sequel. Do you thin that TK or anyone left in ThirdWire would be available for a sale?

[Flanker562]

How much does it cost?

I mean that's the question, and if TK is willing to sell the IP in the first place. I mean you can try their Discord in getting a hold of somebody, but overall somebody like Eagle114th is doing his part (if he's still alive) with learning the game. But who'd be willing to do this? A lot of questions that need to be asked and answered.

[daddyairplanes]

you'd need to have the money up front to but it.  given he still gets some income from it, think high 6 figure minimum. more likely a million or two

now, if youre spending that much money to get teh IP, youre probably not buying for the fun of the community. so youre now going to have to hire on some folks to update the early 2000s Win7 original to a 2026 Win11/12 standard. prefereably a mix of experienced modders and new blood. so thats a few million in payroll and equipment, even if you let everyone work remote.

throw in lawyers for legal stuff, advertising (TKs big mistake back in the day) to at least break even and other unforseen expenses and youre talking at least $10 Million. low ball estimate without the expectation of your creation rivalling DCS or War Thunder. mulitply by 5 or 6 if you want it good enough to be the dominant flight sim out there. 

except for the talking to TK i've done minor looking into it, and it is a recurring daydream on long road trips. most commonly launched when the lottery billboards are up above 100 mil.   

Edited 20 hours ago by daddyairplanes

[Wrench]

that question comes up every few months. The answer is always "NO". 

[alfa2]

6 hours ago, daddyairplanes said:

you'd need to have the money up front to but it.  given he still gets some income from it, think high 6 figure minimum. more likely a million or two

now, if youre spending that much money to get teh IP, youre probably not buying for the fun of the community. so youre now going to have to hire on some folks to update the early 2000s Win7 original to a 2026 Win11/12 standard. prefereably a mix of experienced modders and new blood. so thats a few million in payroll and equipment, even if you let everyone work remote.

throw in lawyers for legal stuff, advertising (TKs big mistake back in the day) to at least break even and other unforseen expenses and youre talking at least $10 Million. low ball estimate without the expectation of your creation rivalling DCS or War Thunder. mulitply by 5 or 6 if you want it good enough to be the dominant flight sim out there. 

except for the talking to TK i've done minor looking into it, and it is a recurring daydream on long road trips. most commonly launched when the lottery billboards are up above 100 mil.   

100% true. Besides that SF2, in its current form still provides a nice experience of Aerial Combat, is surprisingly stable (yes it still is in 2026 and Windows 11) and also a host of hundreds of great mods for all of its content, which make it an eternal Air Warfare Simulation Game (?), otherwise there wouldn't have been so many of us here discussing about it.

[streakeagle]

The investment it would take to update the game to modern standards by someone other than TK could be more costly than starting from scratch. The only way this moves forward is if TK releases the code for free. Even then, it will require some talented coders investing a lot of their time for free to reverse engineer TK's source code to make useful improvements. To date, TK has no intention of giving up the rights to his software for free and who knows how much money it would take for him to sell it?