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8-Year Fan-Made Game Project Shut Down By Activision
An anonymous reader writes "Activision, after acquiring Vivendi, became the new copyright holder of the classic King's Quest series of adventure game. They have now issued a cease and desist order to a team which has worked for eight years on a fan-made project initially dubbed a sequel to the last official installment, King's Quest 8. This stands against the fact that Vivendi granted a non-commercial license to the team, subject to Vivendi's approval of the game after submission. After the acquisition, key team members had indicated on the game's forums (now stripped of their original content by order of Activision) that Activision had given the indication that it intended to keep its current fan-game licenses, but was not interested in issuing new ones."
It's good to know who are friends of gamers. Activision clearly isn't among them.
...unless you're willing to use it.
I'm not really familiar with this project, but couldn't they just call Princess Rosella like "Princess Rosetta" and so on? It's not like Activision can lay claim to the entire swords and sorcery genre.
This stands against the fact that Vivendi granted a non-commercial license to the team, subject to Vivendi's approval of the game after submission.
So, did they actually get this in writing, with a contract signed by both sides? Would such a contract survive an acquisition?
...they should lose it. Are they still actively marketing this game? Do they still sell it? Is there a new version in the works? IP really needs to have a "use-it-or-lose-it" clause.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Wouldn't some of these fan made games get people interested in some of the originals again? You get enough people into a forgotten series who start asking for more and in turn the rights holder makes a new game of their own in the end with a healthy profit hopefully. Yes, I know... big business doesn't understand this type of thing.
Looks like they're just going to move what they already have around a bit and make Quing's Kest instead. It's not like they took a flamethrower to the guys' houses after all.
I remember a time when Activision made their own games, a personal favorite: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was one of them. Is it really inevitable that developers that turn into publishers become malicious to the gamers and to other developers? Hopefully such publishers (and larger developers) will go way of EA, that they deserve, I just hope that all the developers I have come to love don't go down these dark roads. Right now is really bad time for the gaming industry. Almost a dark age if you will.
Is this Corporate jealousy here, true IP rangling, or just a 'we must control all aspects' behavior apparently rampant in the gaming industry?
How exactly is having that fan-made project continue on the agreed terms, bad? Granted it was Vivendi, but still. Did Activision completely obliterate all of Vivendis employees after the acquisition?
One more gaming company to avoid. EA sucks because of the way they treat their programmers, not to mention milking every last drop out of each year's sports games. Ubisoft just announced draconian DRM. Now Activision is acting like a spoiled kid. They keep this up, and they can cry all they want to about pirates, lost sales, and stolen IP.
They still won't be getting any of my money.
Vivendi acquired Activision, not the other way around.
Just call it "DERP QUEST" and change the names.
POKE 36879,8
This is going to generate a lot of bad press for Activision. More than just gamers deciding not to buy their games, Game developers aren't going to want to do business with a company that pulls the rug out from under people. It's a small world out there.
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
A) Fix the summary. Because it's Vivendi that acquired Activision, not the other way around.The first sentence should say: "Activision, after being acquired Vivendi,..."(or something similar)
B) With KQ in mind, what the summary should say, is "Activision, having become a parent company of Sierra,..."
C) Since Vivendi is still the owner of Activision (Vivendi owns ActivisionBizzard and ActivisionBlizzard owns Activision) there should not be any talks about changes of ownership. They may shuffle around their IP, but it's still owned by Vivendi.
... who is surprised by this? Lots of fan projects have been shut down in recent years. Chrono Resurrection, Crimson Echoes, Halogen, etc. Anyone working on a fangame at this point and not taking drastic measures to ensure that they are not infringing on trademarks or copyright gets zero sympathy from me when they get their eventual C&D.
It's a sad catch-22 that to drum up interest in your game project you need to base it on an existing franchise. As long as people are willing to latch onto any small glimmer of hope that their favorite nostalgic game will be remade in modern times, there will be fangames. And they will be shut down.
It's not the kind of thing that could look great on a resume at all...
this is serious bullshit. ive been a modder for years now and i know about fair use. the companies that hold the rights of the games i work on LOVE modding as it increases sales and replay value. Activision you are showing your corporate decay.
Who at activision thought this was a good idea?
They could have simply paid the team a bit of money to get it finished, and then offer them to do the distribution. Something like that.
Which would basically resulted in free money from the work of others (for the service of distribution).
But nooo...
Idiots.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
IANAL, but everyone has to be on their toes these days.
Phoenix Online Studios appears to be a hobbyist collective, and as such is not afforded legal protections of a corporation (Inc., LLC, S-Corp etc) -- an entity protected by the law to pursue profit-making ventures. It's not surprising that they caved to the cease-and-desist because the individuals in the collective could be named and pursued vigorously in a lawsuit.
If they were a for-profit company and entered into an agreement with Vivendi and Activision failed to honor it, they could be sued for breach of contract. Yes, yes, there was a fan license granted by Vivendi whose terms remain unpublished. Chances are there is a severability clause that they signed to and forgot about. Oops.
People who give freely into free and open source projects have to really understand that they are giving away their labors as charity -- but more importantly they have little recourse and motivation to dig their heels in without having the protections of a corporation trying to make a profit.
The only silver lining I could see to this if it means that Activision wanted to develop the game itself. Unless that is the case, I am greatly saddened by this article.
Yes, when you buy another company, you buy its liabilities along with its assets. If Vivendi had an agreement that it must honor, Activision also bought the liability of being bound by that same agreement.
Tort lawyers prefer to get paid a cut of the judgment, so it doesn't matter how much money the fan-developers have.
Activision did not acquire Vivendi. The merged company retained the ATVI stock listing, and Bobby Kotick is running the company, true; but VU got more board seats than Activision. If anything, VU bought Activision.
In unrelated news, "Queen's Journey, the Saga of Gwendolyn's Adventures and Tribulations", should be ready soon.
They worked at it for 8 years, and now they just lay down and quit? Have these people NO self-respect?
"Set a limit of 10 years or similar, after which if there are no new games (and even films) then the universe/characters enter into the public domain like is done for copyright.
This gives enough time for a company to continue a series, and allows fans of franchises that have not seen activity by a company free reign."
Come on, somebody make a Duke Nukem joke.
Isn't it the other way around, Vivendi bought Activision. Vivendi holds the majority share of Activision-Blizzard and they just kept those two names because of the value attached to them.
"Thy Quest of Kings" would be fitting!
Would that really be that much work? Call it's "Royal Adventure" or some such....change the character names, and be done with it. There's nothing that prevents them from making a Sierra "like" adventure game. I've always been mystified when some fan group works for years to build a game and gives up over a C&D because they are obviously violating the IP of the holder. Don't drop the project! Just change the particulars!
A quick search for a torrent (http://www.google.com/search?q=King's+Quest+Silver+Lining+filetype:torrent) yields nothing! All of the official KQ games are out there, but not this one. How can I independently evaluate the quality of the game, and thus the depth of Activision's transgression, if I can't find a torrent?
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
The issue here I think is where small game developers "clone" old games. Instead of cloning them - re-image them instead. I started a new gold box game engine (web site ugly right now) which uses a similar look and feel but I'm redesigning it from scratch (and implementing new features).
I hope this not effect the development of Duke Nukem.
8 Years without a final product?? Sounds like Vaporware to me.
Is anyone surprised?
Bob (call me Rob) Kotick is exactly as portrayed. He is maniacal in his belief that the gaming community is an impediment to profit and uses the console players as the poster children for his proof. He has no understanding of how core gamer communities influence sales over the long run. He would rather spend 10's of millions on hype to carry the day, than spend a penny back to the customer base to secure some brand loyalty. He believes that customers as are the actual game franchises and are meant to be wrung out, for every single dime. He has said as much publicly several times. Why complicate things by having to aid or listen to what he considers a small radical segment. He considers free content as competition that costs him profit and anything like a community, as a challenge to his total control to get those profits.
None should be surprised by this latest move of abject disgust for anything relating to free content by a community. In fact you can expect more to come. Bob Kotick will continue this scorched earth policy. Bobby is here and he is letting everyone know who is in charge. Dissent will be squashed.
As long as gamers let Bob Kotick go unchallenged, then they are the sheep he thinks they are. Until free content and free servers are systematically destroyed, then the future of pay to play and pay content can't be fully realized and exploited for profit. Bob Kotick is betting you he is right.
Civ II was MicroProse (ahh, that list takes me back); Activision did Call to Power.
Indeed - it's okay for them to remake Civilization, but they don't like it when someone does it to their games...
I would like to see one.
With EA, Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard out, who is left?
BTW... For all of you talking about "Trademarks", you've got the wrong intellectual property there.
Software is protected by COPYRIGHT, as is the creative content within it.
Trademarks only protect PRODUCT BRANDING insofar as it is "USED" to sell a product to the public. These guys were not selling anything to anyone, and most of the content of the King's Quest game could not be fairly considered a "mark" as it wouldn't have appeared on the packaging of the game .
So in the end, their development project was pulled out of fear of COPYRIGHT infringement.
I recall mid 90's when Fox was trying to shut down every X-Files fan page, and Lucas wanted to shut down every Star Wars fan page. They felt they were copyright infringement. What they didn't realize is that fan hype is free marketing. It only increases the value of your intellectual property.
An IP owner needs to protect their trademark, but they can issue a fan license to cover that.
This isn't just mean, it is bad business sense.
And while we're talking about old game properties that should be resurrected with a fan game, Commander Keen anyone?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I'll never forgive them for what they did to the Interstate '76 franchise.
At the end of the day, can you really be sued for non-commercial work?
If this fan project is released for free, how is that any different that someone writing fan-fic and releasing it for free?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Why should Nintendo give you the so-called "right" to play a twenty-year-old game on the Wii without paying for it, first? Their NES emulator didn't just come out of thin air.
It's your sense of entitlement that doesn't make sense.
Assuming the game sucks, as fan fiction tends to, they might be able to continue development as a satire of the KQ series?
EA can take their "innovation" and shove it.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/08/30/1618218/Personalized-In-Game-Advertising-In-Upcoming-Titles
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I personally think the only way to get this back on track is to start a BAN on activision.. $$ talks and a ban of their products will hurt them and make them reflect. TSL should start flooding the game forums left and right ...
Bet you it won't take long that Activision will see the light of day ...
You can count me in, i will no longer buy an Activision product ..!
Sign the petition to save The Silver Lining!
In case you haven't seen this game, search around the Internet for some screenshots (or see the original website tsl-game.com on the Internet Archive). It was in full 3D and very nicely done, recreating very elegantly many environments from the original King's Quest games (from what I could see in the publicly released demo which you might still be able to find somewhere?).
You know what they say. Heir today, gone tomorrow...
Which Bono? Paul or Chaz?
Oh wow, and now I'm the jerk who didn't read the article.
Sorry. Mod me down please.
Comment of the year
Exactly what I was going to say. Make it a "Spiritual successor" or whatever. Did the creators of UFO: Extra-terrestrials need to license the X-Com IP? And that's a commercial game!
....Time to short the stock.
Regards;
> What damages are here?
Yes, one wonders what damages Activision envisioned would accrue if they let the project continue.
As for the damages to the project, that's rather obvious, what isn't obvious is how the court might assign value for the work lost or if the court would merely reinstate the original license (in which case a lawyer on contingency would not get paid unless the court ruled that Activision needed to pay him).
Oh I wish I could invest a cool $10 billion into ATVI in one direct transaction. With my new 909 million shares (more than all other investors combined), I could take full control. Ban the use of DRM, reinstate the fan-based licensing, allow copyright law to be used instead of EULA's. So for any of you who have recently won a massive lotto jackpot, consider putting your voice into the anti-consumer rights choices that some of the smaller software publishers make.
this is exactly what these guys did when they got hassled by Games Workshop (who are notorious wankers when it comes to this stuff, I hear). They made a tribute / fan game recreating the Space Hulk board game, maybe a decade plus after the last Space Hulk game IP had been released...
They changed the name to Alien Assault, tweaked some art assets and any specific universe references, and now they're completely in the clear. It's the EXACT same game, just minus the free promotion for Games Workshop.
Epic fail, facepalm, and slow clap all around...
http://www.teardown.se/
stick it to 'em
(only games workshop thing I have is the deluxe edition 20th anniversary edition of Space Hulk which I got myself for Christmas, largely on word of mouth merits via boardgamegeek.com and playing this little gem of a game. and yet they hit the geek with a cease and desist awhile back too -- it was on slashdot...)
just...
wow. they don't just look a gift horse in the mouth, they actually pull out the shotgun and put one between its eyes for good measure.
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
Who cares?
Get up!
How many times have we heard of this happening, why do groups of talented people persist?
NEVER donate your time, especially not 8 years, to someone else's IP.
Had they put 8 years into making adventure stories for say Neverwinter Nights 2 or something they probably would have been able to strike a deal for paid expansions (Like Mysteries of Westgate).
Or had they put 8 years into their own IP. All it would have taken was to change the names, places...move the story around a bit. They could even have said that it was Inspired by Kings Quest etc. etc. (Torchlight inspired by Diablo).
This is really very sad.But the corporate beast has no feelings and no loyalty.
-Gel214th
"Activision acquired Vivendi" - it was the other way around, the board of Activision Blizzard consists of the former Vivendi board. Vivendi wanted a better brand name..
Be sure to like the games. Just don't like them too much. If you become a fan you'll be screwed.
Life sucks if you give a shit.