Slashdot Mirror
Square Enix Shuts Down Fan-Made Chrono Trigger Sequel
KIllagouge writes "Just days before the release of Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, SquareEnix sent a Cease & Desist letter to Chrono Compendium to stop everything to do with Crimson Echoes. People might remember when they did this with Chrono Resurrection. Seems to be the growing trend; instead of listening to their fans, which would net them even more money, game developers continue to lock down old gaming IP. A copy of the C&D letter is available online."
The fan project had been in development since 2004 and was 98% complete.
Never heard of them
I can make do without their game. Can they make do without my money?
So far, so good.
I'd wager that most of the people interested in this project do already own a legal copy of Chrono Trigger for either SNES or Playstation.
But they probably do not own the equipment to copy their Super NES cartridges to the PC. Per UMG v. MP3.com, owning a lawfully made copy doesn't entitle you to download another copy elsewhere.
Replace X characters with new Y characters.
Is it still infringement?
Yes. It's a ROM hack, meaning that it uses most of the same computer program as the original game. Putting new characters in a non-free program doesn't make it not a non-free program.
Here's fourteen titles off the top of my head: Half-Life, Neverwinter Nights, Quake, Doom, Unreal, The Sims, Spore, Elder Scrolls, Civilization, Fallout 3, Bard's Tale, Lode Runner, Boulder Dash and Raid on Bungling Bay.
Some of those titles can be broken down into additional individual games (for example, The Sims was a significantly different game from The Sims 2, especially from a modding perspective) so this list could be expanded quite a bit. Some of them make modding a necessary part of their structure (Spore) and others wouldn't have garnered any attention at all if not for their mod tools (Raid on Bungling Bay) and others have just been outright owned by the mod community (Doom). And it's worth noting that even this short list of games represents a substantial portion of the entire market for video games on personal computers. The Sims and Half-Life alone have sold more games than the rest of the top ten list put together, and that includes World of Warcraft.
So, yes, modding is a significant factor in the success of "a lot" of great games on the PC.
But that doesn't mean that when we are discussing a non-US topic, that US law is somehow automatically applicable!
Nor did it mean that we were even discussing a non-US topic. WHOIS says the domain is registered to a proxy company based in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. And Netcraft's report says the site is hosted in the United States.
Assuming they did not rip off too much, they should just rename the game, characters, locations, redraw the character sprites so they bare no resemblance and then release like that. If they are still not happy and are feeling daring, they can later "leak" a patch which changes everything back to as it was originally intended.
It was a Chrono Trigger rom hack. Removing all Square-Enix IP would be starting from scratch, thus not really a viable option.
I know you have come to kill me.
Shoot, coward. You are only going to kill a man.
Uh, no one creates original derivative works for WoW (a.k.a. emulated servers) without getting a cease and desist letter. Not only that, but Blizzard recently started taking advantage of what is actually a pretty strict licensing agreement for working on UI mods, such as not allowing them to be sold or allowing them to ask for donations anywhere in-game.
Further, there's a long detailed history of mods for Quake, Unreal, Half-life, etc. that took content, characters, or even just concepts from other works that were not part of the game they were modding being shut down permanently by the owners of said content, characters, or concepts. Those games also have detailed license agreements about what users are and are not allowed to do with mods for those games.
There is no such modding agreement with Square Enix for Chrono Trigger.