King's Quest 9 Lives!

NotFamousYet writes "After having previously shut down the development of King's Quest IX: Every Cloak Has A Silver Lining, Vivendi Universal made a press announcement saying: 'After extensive evaluation, Vivendi Universal Games is pleased to announce that the fan developed trilogy project 'The Silver Lining' (previously known as King's Quest IX: Every Cloak Has A Silver Lining), based on characters from Sierra Entertainment's 'Kings Quest' series, has been given approval to continue development. We look forward to seeing the first of its three upcoming chapters, 'Shadows', completed soon.' Check out this very promising fan made sequel!" Commentary and more linkage at GameSetWatch.

Comments

Why don't these fan-made games...

[Blakey Rat]

Why don't these fan-made games ever ask for permission *before* they spend hundreds of hours on development? It seems like it would save a lot of trouble if/when the rights-holder decides to shut them down.

Re:Why don't these fan-made games...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're labors of love created by people who a) may not be so legal-savvy, and/or b) may consider their work to be fan fiction that the IP owners won't go after.

Re:Why don't these fan-made games...

[moonbender]

I'm pretty sure that, had they asked for permission before doing it, Vivendi would just have said no, and that would have been it. Asking after the fact is risky, but sometimes the only way to achieve things.

Re:Why don't these fan-made games...

[AuMatar]

A life lesson for you- its usually easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Asking permission in this case will end up with a form letter saying no. Begging forgiveness with a horde of screaming fans behind you may get you a yes. And there's the chance you'll get in under legal's radar. The chance is at least better than the 0% of asking permission.

Re:Why don't these fan-made games...

[KDR_11k]

Standard policy is to say nothing when approacched by fans like that and only C&D them when the project reaches a sufficiently advanced stage. Most fan projects collapse by themselves and saying "we don't want that" straight away creates bad PR. So they wait until the project looks like it's going to get done and then send out the C&D letter.

Re:Why don't these fan-made games...

[supabeast!]

You expect internet geeks to actually be thoughtful and considerate of others in their lives? Keep dreaming.

Re:Why don't these fan-made games...

[damsa]

Asking permission also brings you into the dangerous territory of wilful infringement, which results in treble damages.

Props to Vivendi

[BTWR]

After the original story appeared, it consisted of dozens of comments, mostly complaining how Vivendi shut down production of a fan-made game of a well-loved series (that unfortunately ended so poorly). I sided with these comments, despite knowing that Vivendi had a point in trying to control their copyrights (for future precidents, etc).

But in this case, I think Vivendi should get their dues. This is a good thing done by them, and hopefully will continue in the future. It just seems like most slashdot posts, hell most internet posts, are people bitching about not getting what they want. In this case, we got what we want, and (gasp!) - I'm leaving a positive post!

Wow

[Xarius]

I seriously did not see this one coming, most companies would have buried the project and let it rot for all time. Think bnetd!

Kudos to Vivendi, thanks to them and the people working on these games.

Egad! Profit?

[chudgoo]

1 : Create popular franchise then kill it.
2 : Wait for deprived fans to get restless enough to create their own productions based on dead franchise.
3 : Threaten legal action unless they give you all the content they've created.
4 : PROFIT.

Seriously though why didn't they just change the names/locations/backstory enough to
come off as a separate, original work?

Good to hear

[MoreNoiseThanSignal]

I'm pleasantly suprised. It's good to know that just because Vivendi has had at least a part in making Sierra what it is today, it won't doom efforts of other sto carry on things in its spirit.

Now we just need more Quest for Glory games.

Re:Good to hear

[damsa]

I think most older people would respond that Vivendi is what killed Sierra and why it is what it is today. I present exhibit A) Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude.

Yay

[CableModemSniper]

"We are the ants king Antony, we're coming to help King Graham!" Sorry, V was the only one I played, but this is awesome news.

How unusual

[ArwynH]

And definitly not the outcome I'd expected. Let's hope this sets a good precident for fan games to come. Yey for KQ!

Now I just have to hope for a Space Quest continuation...

Unexpected, but appreciated.

[The Eagle Maint]

I definitely understand wanting to protect your copyrights and all, but it would seem to me that if you have a product or characters or whatever with such a great following, that it would be beneficial to allow the fans some room to play. I would think a community keeping a game alive like this would only make their property more popular.

Now all I'd like to see is Chrono Resurrection allowed to be released.

Does this mean Vivendi are good or bad now?

[jonwil]

They did shut down bnetd and freecraft.
But now they are giving the OK to KQ9...

Re:Does this mean Vivendi are good or bad now?

[syrinx]

The Freecraft thing was pretty bad if I remember right, but they had every right to shut down bnetd, considering its sole purpose was to allow people to play pirated copies of Warcraft III online. I know, this is Slashdot, everyone thinks they have the right to take things for free if they want them, but I can understand how Vivendi might think differently and might even *gasp* try to stop people from not paying for their products.

Re:Does this mean Vivendi are good or bad now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, bnetd was a full emulation of battle.net, so it supported all of the games. They could hardly do the copy-protection checks without reverse-engineering Blizzard's copy protection code, which would violate the DMCA in a number of ways, but emulation for interoperability should have been fine. (It's not up to the bnetd developers to police their users, and as it was open source anything they included to do this could have been removed by end users anyway.)

A poor decision by the judge in that case, I thought.

Re:Does this mean Vivendi are good or bad now?

[jonwil]

Actually, the official bnetd distribution did not support Warcraft III (or the beta).

A modified version was created by a third party that supported the Warcraft III beta.

I helped with this!

[AbraCadaver]

...I think - I sent them a VERY unhappy email as I'm sure many others did.
Here is basically what I said:


Dear Vivendi,

I am a 33-year old male with a steady job and a sizable disposable income. I buy at least one or two games a month for myself, and I often buy games for my friends if I think the game is cool enough. That being said, I was very displeased to find out about your treatment of the fan-created sequel "King's Quest IX: Every Cloak Has A Silver Lining". I will now use my decent sized gaming budget on other games, and will never buy another game from Vivendi Universal again. This kind of rediculous action is what will drive your company in to the ground. I'm really going to enjoy one of those nice executive oak desks when they come up for auction! Have a nice day.


Now maybe it had something to do with their decision, and maybe not, but I'm willing to bet that there were more than a few irate emails like mine, and Vivendi realized what terrible PR they were getting from some lawyer "just doing his job" or some such thing. Hopefully more companies will confer with themselves internally before doing more boneheadded stunts like persuing a property that was all but abandoned AFTER fans had been making this project publicly for quite a while already.

And on a final note, just in case Vivendi is reading this (which I doubt, but anyway):

IF this sequel goes well, you stand a good chance of making more money from a property( that you've pretty much ignored up until now) by paying these people to work for you on the next sequel. What a concept, eh?

1) Fans create game & revive interest in a "dead" property
2) Company hires fans to make NEXT addition to property
3) Profit!

Re:I helped with this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice letter. But before you send another one like that, run a spellchecker on it first. 'Rediculous' is not a word...

Re:Egad! Profit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not always about getting a game out there, the series has alot of holes in the story that these fan developers wanted to fill and probably add to the story. Frankly I'd like to see if any of my questions about the series are answered.

I know it's the principle that matters here, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone seen the actual game so far? It looks pretty amateurish. If it's been in development for years and it still looks this bad... you gotta wonder. Will it ever be complete? What's the ETA? Maybe they need to take a step back and, I dunno, go to 2D. This really isn't intended to be a flame on the game or anything, but frankly, I was expecting a lot more after all the work that supposedly went into it.

Re:Egad! Profit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously though why didn't they just change the names/locations/backstory enough to come off as a separate, original work?

Because nobody would care if they did.

Look at, oh, Star Wars 1-3, or any recent Star Trek. Who would have watched them if they'd tried to introduce new universes? Nobody. But you can sell anything if it fits into a popular franchise. Same goes for fan games: hardly anyone's interested in original fiction written "in the style of" a popoular author, but there's a huge number of people writing fiction set in popular universes. Did you never wonder why?