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 Sunday at 02:26 PM 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?

 

[MAF1247]

8 hours ago, streakeagle said:

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?

 

Considering what some free modders have done with BMS, starting with the leaked code of Falcon 4.0 of late 90s, i would not put limits to what it could be accomplished with the code of Strike Fighters 2 which seems, apparentely, even more malleable compared to Falcon 4. But ofc this is pure theory and a pipe dream because, as you said, TK has no intention to release the code for free nor selling it, which i think it's a pity in the last case, because if he doesn't use it or plan to use it anymore, why not bank on it? 

[MAF1247]

14 hours ago, alfa2 said:

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.

This proves how much of a good game SF2 is and how good is its main engine for the development. I'm sad only because we're in 2026 and nobody relased anything closer to SF2 in terms of experience and moddability. Games like Nuclear Option don't count because they seems more arcadey than simlite and it looks like more "Battlefield 6 with only aircrafts" than a combat flight simlite. Unfortuantely, i don't have any kind of skills in programming, modding, or modeling and no money, otherwise i would have liked to make something similar to Strike Fighters 2, but with modern tools. I truly hope that in the future someone can take the mantle from Thirdwire and Tk and making the spiritual successor of the saga.

[MAF1247]

21 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.   

Even if someone buys it only to sell it on Steam or GOG, it would already increase the revenue stream by itself. One of the reason why SF2 is not well known in the flight sim community is because is almost impossible finding or buying it online, considering the abysmal state of ThirdWire website. Moreover, it's too overpriced. It's true that with mods it offers a better experience, but paying 100$ for a 17 years old flight sim it's really a robbery considering the actual market with competitors like DCS, IL2 or even BMS (which is for free). On steam the complete collection should not go beyond 30$, which is a fair price for what the game offers today. On this, i'm sorry if i sound rude or offensive, but TK is a little bit too greedy.

I honestly don't even know if the license would cost in Millions of dollars. TK itself said that SF2 didn't sell too much to make another expansion or a sequel, so i don't think he could value so much the licens for the game. In my opinion, to be optimist, maybe he could get $300K-$500K.

[Flanker562]

34 minutes ago, MAF1247 said:

Even if someone buys it only to sell it on Steam or GOG, it would already increase the revenue stream by itself. One of the reason why SF2 is not well known in the flight sim community is because is almost impossible finding or buying it online, considering the abysmal state of ThirdWire website. Moreover, it's too overpriced. It's true that with mods it offers a better experience, but paying 100$ for a 17 years old flight sim it's really a robbery considering the actual market with competitors like DCS, IL2 or even BMS (which is for free). On steam the complete collection should not go beyond 30$, which is a fair price for what the game offers today. On this, i'm sorry if i sound rude or offensive, but TK is a little bit too greedy.

I honestly don't even know if the license would cost in Millions of dollars. TK itself said that SF2 didn't sell too much to make another expansion or a sequel, so i don't think he could value so much the licens for the game. In my opinion, to be optimist, maybe he could get $300K-$500K.

If you look at the prices that you pay for DCS and such, 100 bucks + free mods here (and there too) makes it a frakkin bargain. Not only do I have to not worry about missing a CLC aircraft or whatnot that was put out through the years, but again, I've paid nearly a thousand dollars for DCS alone (okay not that much, but if you buy everything it'll add up quick, and let's not forget hard drive space), SF2 is a better deal by far. Besides as mentioned, you don't need to spend more money buying all the various games and the DLCs. It's far cheaper by any stretch of the imagination, because if I bought two modules for DCS, then it would easily be over 100 dollars. No, while you're right, SF2 is 17 years old, people are still eeking out content and did I mention that I don't have to (even if I didn't get a subscription), I have access to more content (I mean we've been going through the files, but if you look at the amount  of files, it's a lot). So if I didn't play DCS I could play a fairly decent flight sim (I mean yeah got it, it's aged), but again, spending 100 beans (or equivalent) is just a steal.

[daddyairplanes]

1 hour ago, MAF1247 said:

Even if someone buys it only to sell it on Steam or GOG, it would already increase the revenue stream by itself. One of the reason why SF2 is not well known in the flight sim community is because is almost impossible finding or buying it online, considering the abysmal state of ThirdWire website. Moreover, it's too overpriced. It's true that with mods it offers a better experience, but paying 100$ for a 17 years old flight sim it's really a robbery considering the actual market with competitors like DCS, IL2 or even BMS (which is for free). On steam the complete collection should not go beyond 30$, which is a fair price for what the game offers today. On this, i'm sorry if i sound rude or offensive, but TK is a little bit too greedy.

I honestly don't even know if the license would cost in Millions of dollars. TK itself said that SF2 didn't sell too much to make another expansion or a sequel, so i don't think he could value so much the licens for the game. In my opinion, to be optimist, maybe he could get $300K-$500K.

not gonna argue about Steam/GoG sales or decent pricing for on there.

but consider, it is HIS game. his creation, his baby

the South Vietnam Hercules skin, one of my simplest and easiest to create, still took about 48 hours to create. not 4 days, 48 individual hours spread over two weeks (no pun intended). thats one skin for one established aircraft. TK made a whole series of games, and owns the IP to every bit of it that comes off the TW website.

it might be old. he might not be doing much with it. he might not be managing the sales of it well. but it is still TKs baby. and if he was going to sell out cheap like 300K, he would have done so along time ago.

 

[Wrench]

yawn.

same of discussion over and over and over for the last 20 years.

As DA said, it's TK's choice to do what he wants/needs. No amount of discussion is going to change the already set facts

[streakeagle]

7 hours ago, MAF1247 said:

Considering what some free modders have done with BMS, starting with the leaked code of Falcon 4.0 of late 90s, i would not put limits to what it could be accomplished with the code of Strike Fighters 2 which seems, apparentely, even more malleable compared to Falcon 4. But ofc this is pure theory and a pipe dream because, as you said, TK has no intention to release the code for free nor selling it, which i think it's a pity in the last case, because if he doesn't use it or plan to use it anymore, why not bank on it? 

When TK was a programmer for other game companies as part of a team, he was notorious for writing code only he could understand. Falcon 4.0 was leaked over 20 years ago. It was a long time before real gains were being made in key areas such as updating the graphics engine or supporting anything other than F-16 avionics for non-F-16 flyable aircraft. That fact that TK never finished his Win10 update that began with a failed GoFundMe campaign should tell you that updating the code will take some effort.

[daddyairplanes]

4 hours ago, streakeagle said:

 That fact that TK never finished his Win10 update that began with a failed GoFundMe campaign should tell you that updating the code will take some effort.

brings me back to my $10 Million estimate.

i doubt anyone seriously offered the man 7 figures for the IP

then, even if you did convince him, you'd need to get folks to work on it. i usually daydream a mix of college students and modders from here. 5 figure annual for the kids, 6 figure annual for the older heads. plus new rigs and monitors for all involved 

i mean i could sit on it and let one or two hack away for funsies. but if you spend 1-5 million on something, you probably want some sort of return on investment.......

 

and yes. if i ever win the lottery, Erik will be first to know. followed by TK. followed by several here at CA 

[daddyairplanes]

5 hours ago, Wrench said:

yawn.

same of discussion over and over and over for the last 20 years.

  yup