A thread on Ken Levine's Facebook page discusses the uncertainty surrounding some game properties, as the Irrational Games boss says that he doesn't actually know who owns the rights to System Shock, the old-school action/RPG that inspired the BioShock series, though he confirms that Take-Two owns the rights to BioShock (thanks Jivaro). The thread includes some interesting participation from other developers, as George Broussard suggests Kickstarting another "spiritual successor" to System Shock using the Unity engine, and there are also posts from Brian Reynolds. Reynolds says the System Shock rights sound as convoluted as the Alpha Centauri rights, and his follow-up explanation reveals his desire to be able to create a shooter based on the 4X strategy series he helped design at Firaxis. Here's word:

I think EA mostly owns it but Firaxis has the right to develop, but Firaxis is now part of 2K, so it's a big gordian knot. And the main original story guy (me) doesn't work at any of those places. On the other hand I remember back in the 90's when the Civ rights were a complete mess e.g. Activision, Hasbro, Spectrum Holobyte, Avalon Hill, Hartland Trefoil. Miraculously that particular IP Humpty Dumpty got put back together again which is why there are still new Civ games. Of course what I really want to do is a shooter/RPG in the Alpha Centauri universe :)