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Square Enix Shuts Down Fan-Made Chrono Trigger Sequel

Posted by Soulskill on from the suspicious-timing dept.

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.

3 of 455 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Never heard of them by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Never heard of them

    I can make do without their game. Can they make do without my money?

    So far, so good.

  2. It's a ROM hack by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:Unfortunate by snerdy · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.