Slashdot Mirror
Fan-Made 'Metal Gear Solid' Remake Cancelled; Gamers Blame Konami (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Fans of the popular Metal Gear Solid series are ticked off at Konami over the cancellation of an unofficial, fan-built remake of the very first title that shipped for the original PlayStation way back in 1998. The remake's cancellation was announced on the project's Facebook page, which immediately prompted backlash aimed at Konami for presumably having a hand in it. The project, dubbed Shadow Moses, was the brainchild of indie game designer Airam Hernandez. It appears he may have assembled a small team to remake the original Metal Gear Solid using Unreal Engine 4. While it hasn't been confirmed that Konami shut the project down, it wouldn't be surprising to find out that it did. This wouldn't be the first fan project to be cancelled, and it likely won't be the last— Metal Gear Solid is Konami's property, and even Hernandez acknowledged at one point that he would eventually need Konami's permission to publish it.
These days basically everyone in the gaming industry agrees that the world would be a better place if Konami finally dies in a fire.
#Fuckonami, started by Jim Sterling (Think Moviebob, but for Games) has gotten trendendous pickup right up to the audience having a solid reason to Boo! Konami at the Game Awards - they legally prevented from Hideo Kojima from recieving his own award (No joke!).
The borderline insane bullshit Konami has done in recent years is bedazzling and let's even non-industry observers wonder why a company is so hell bent on destroying its reputation and ip. Hideo Kojima has since moved on and Konami is shunned as the semi-dangerous nutbag bum in gaming town by just about anybody.
Bottom line:
If you want to mod a commercial game, steer clear of Konami.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well yeah, that's kind of the core of the system. And you nailed it. The indie devs could EASILY have made their own game paying homage to metal gear. From the sounds of it, they wanted to do a direct remake in a new engine. That's a pretty shitty idea for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, every damn game company is doing "classic" remakes of everything in their catalog so it is pretty stupid to assume this company wouldn't be thinking forwards like that. Second, who the hell wants to trace? That's what this would have been, tracing. The game is already completed, they would be redoing it, reworking the assets. I'm not discounting the skill for those actually revamping the models and such. But for the designer, this is a cheap cop out. That goes against everything I would put into an indie developers pocket. Seriously, you want to be a indie developer so you go ahead and decide to illegally remake one of the biggest games of all time from one of the larger publishers? Clearly this whole deal was done to get them to stop the project and get these unoriginal asshats some publicity.
Yeah... no.
Unless tons of stealth games suddenly start referring to themselves as "Metal Gear Solids", and Konami does nothing about it, they're in no danger whatsoever of the brand name becoming genericized (ala Kleenex).
Konami shut down this project because it could potentially harm sales of their own remake down the line. That's it. They certainly have every right to protect their IP in this manner, but it's not because "they had to or risk losing the IP", or because "consumers would become confused" (though the latter may very well be how they try to spin it).
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
A few examples (google "fan game remake shut down":
Streets of Rage Remake, Resident Evil 2, Chrono Trigger, Legend of Zelda (Link to the Past, typically). Even the Mario 64 tech demo in Unreal 3 got shut down, it wasn't even released or any levels created.
I'm sure there are others, but the only instances that come to mind where they publisher didn't go ape on the little guy was Duke 3D remake in Unreal Engine, and The Dark Mod (basically Thief remade in the Doom3 engine).