No, I think Steve Purcell owns the IP, since ever.
When Lucasfilm released Sam&Max Hit the road, Steve gave a license of use to Lucasfilm, for a limited time.
So, Lucasfilm had never had the Sam & Max IP, hence they were not included in the Disney ↔ Lucasfilm transaction.
I wonder how the situation would be for Howard The Duck if Disney wouldn´t own Marvel, too. Probably like with Sam & Max. But isn´t Purcell with Disney anyway these days? Or at least with Pixar?
Yes, this is common. But in most cases, the developer buys the right to use the IP for the particular game for an unlimited time. So in this case Disney can’t make a new Sam and Max game but they would be allowed to re-release the existing game.
So the question is: Are they allowed to re-publish Sam and Max hit the road? Or is it like the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy where Douglas Adams owned the whole game?
AFAIR Ron said somewhere that he is working for Pixar.
Uhm, can you imagine Zootopia 2 with Max instead of Judy? 
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Talking about IMDB, the TWP page is almost empty.
- It doesn’t list the characters for most of the voices.
- It does not have a synopsis.
- It does not have a plot summary or full plot.
- No images. (I added 1, its pending for review)
- No content advisory.
Agree, Trivia, Crazy Credits, Quotes and Connections also shouldn´t be empty. If someone knows how to do that go ahead.
Might proove difficult because the game´s end titles themselves also doesn´t associate any voice actors with the NPCs.
The TV Tropes page on the other hand is pretty full:
Wadjet Eye is in the business of making old school adventure games for ten years I think, so it’s possible. TWP is much more polished than their games and probably much more expensive though. I’m not a huge fan but I like what Wadjet Eyed is doing. They made / produced some decent games and once in a while they have something outstanding like Gemini Rue. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the TWP team to make games that are smaller and cheaper in the future. I don’t think anyone expected Ron to deliver a game this big.
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You are right, I used the extremely vague expression “economically sound”, which can mean practically anything.
I’ll rephrase my doubt in this way “I have no idea if PnC adventure game developers earn just what it takes to pay their rent and put in the bank account a small sum for each game released or if their business is much more remunerative than this scenario.”
Almost nobody shares real income figures and I don’t know if adventure game developers just keep creating this kind of games because they are mainly driven by artistic reasons or also because it actually makes sense from an economic point of view.
I agree about that game! Spectacular story and design.
Nostalgia and being sure to play something they already enjoyed make them sell. I bought both MI remakes right away. Selling something new is much harder. If I did not know you were not involved I could have missed it all together. Reaching everybody that can potentially buy (including the guys who bought the DotT remakes is the hardest part. Stream does good recommendations every time you login but most just skip those and play the game.
That’s the main reason. Only a few games are successful (in an economical way).
Wadjet Eye sells games made by different authors/developers. The games are “small” and could be done in the spare time of the developers. So you can’t compare them to TWP.
They produce (not just sell!) games by others, that’s true, but they also make their own games. Blackwell series and The Shivah are theirs for example.
That’s my hunch, but I have no data to base my impression on. If you have been able to make a statistic, I assume that there is some data out there that can be accessed. Is it public?
I agree, that’s exactly one of the things that I wanted to understand.
I am less interested into knowing if developers who work in their spare time can make a profit. I was more interested to understand if developing PnC adventure games can be a viable option for a company (with employees and other costs typical of companies).
For example, Daedalic Entertainment has developed and produced several PnC adventure games along the years. Does that prove that it can be economically sound to make a business in this niche?
What surprises me is that 2D pixel-art is appreciated quite a bit in other kinds of modern games, like retro-styled platformers. Shovel Knight was quite appreciated for its old 2D platform style. I would say the same has happened for Terraria, even if it isn’t a platformer.
And the most incredible thing to me is that even I, a long time pixel art appreciator who has loved Mark’s work both in the past and in TWP, do perceive pixel art in PnC adventure games as something that is “dated”, while it doesn’t happen when I observe Shovel Knight or other modern pixel-art games like Stardew Valley.
Stardew Valley made way more money than Call of Duty on Steam, and other 2016 sales insights
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I love the art of TWP and I’d hate to think that there’s an inherent problem with this style reaching commercial success, or that the game fails in any way on its merits. I wonder if instead, that it’s a problem of exposure. When I look at the MI2 remake page on steam, TWP is not on the “more like this” section. it’s not on that list for MI1, DOTT, Indy4 or any of the old LA games either. There’s no reason why DOTT or MI customers wouldn’t love TWP, if they only knew about it.
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That happens because Steam calculates the similarity of two games taking into consideration the tags that users have assigned to them.
The tags assigned to MI2 don’t match very well with those assigned to TWP and as a consequence the TWP is not considered very similar to MI2.
I agree with you that a lack of exposure might have been one issue but I’m starting to believe that it isn’t the main one and that the analysis of why the game didn’t sell better seems quite complex.
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Let us all go and apply the tag “Ron Gilbert” to the 4 Steam games: MI1, MI2, TWP and DoTT.
If enough of us does that it might help. I think if just 15-20 of us does it, it might start to have an effect.
Done, for my part.
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This smart idea is called “tag spamming” and yes, it can work if enough people do it. 
Still, I prefer not to do it (also because I could never assign a “Ron Gilbert” tag to DoTT 
)
Why not? Hasn’t he worked on the SCUMM engine? Isn’t the complete Maniac Mansion game inside?
Wow, what a stupid idea!
Ok, I just finished adding the tag to those games using my Steam account.
Btw. When looking at store page for TWP, MI1 shows up. So there is a connection, its just one-way.