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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
It probably wasn't about making a game to make money or the like. They probably liked the old game and wanted to play it with a modern engine.
How to become an indie game designer in 3 easy steps. Step 1: Think up an original idea (oh shit) Step 2: You really need to complete step 1 before you get here Step 3: You didn't even read step 2 did you?
Lol neither did you
These days basically everyone in the gaming industry agrees that the world would be a better place if Konami finally dies in a fire.
...and then dies again 29 more times.
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.
Exactly. I really don't know what they expected. Trademark law requires you to defend your trademark or you risk losing it. It would have made much more sense to just make a game that copied the style of the original game without making an outright copy. Konami is still selling games using the Metal Gear Solid name. So I could see why they would want to shut down this project to get rid of any confusion between the fan-made game and official releases from Konami.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There may not be any harm, but it also means you have exactly zero moral high ground to try to claim when the company inevitably shuts it down.
The fact that someone really loves an IP typically has no bearing on whether a company will grant permission or not, and given the fact that Konami is a Japanese arcade company at its heart - the type of company that is traditionally very resistant to let the "gaijin" have anything to do with their studios - anyone in the industry with a modicum of sense could have seen this coming a mile away.
If you want to make a remake of a game you really love, and you're skilled enough to get into the game industry at all, then do what everyone else does: Get into the industry, put in your time, and once you've got a proven track record, approach the company and work out an actual, licensed deal to remake the IP. Anything else is just going to lead to tears, and it's your own fault for crying.
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This was pure stupidity from start to finish. Putting considerable time and effort into developing a game which you know you do not have the rights to publish is generally not a bad idea. When the game you are developing is a remake of a game which still has considerable commercial value, and which is owned by a company which does not have a long history of encouraging third party modding and development, it is dafter still.
Konami own the rights to Metal Gear Solid. If you want a remake of it, tell them so (letters, e-mails, petitions, questions from the floor at trade-shows - whatever). Companies like making money and if they think there is an audience for a remake of an old game, then they will generally do the remake. If they don't, then... there's not really much you can do.
If you want to make a stealth-action game, then make one. Konami own the rights to Metal Gear Solid, but they do not own the rights to "everything that looks a bit like Metal Gear Solid". There are no shortage of games out there, both AAA and indie, which take a degree of inspiration from Metal Gear Solid. If you have a team with the skills to make a game as ambitious as a full remake of Metal Gear Solid would be, then go that route.
But trying to make a game which you know it is vanishingly unlikely you will be allowed to publish and then whinging when you are not allowed to publish it is just stupid.
Metal Gear Solid was like the 3rd game in the series. The first 2 were 8-bit top down games for the NES.
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.
Especially since Konami's already done it more than once.
Visit the
The game belongs to the company that made it. It doesn't belong to you. They paid for the development. They took the risks. You bought it and played it, great. But the fact that you bought it and played it doesn't mean you somehow own it now.
If they don't want it remade, then what you want is irrelevant. You're not entitled to anything, snowflakes.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If you can get this far into a game's development, please consider creating original content. It has never been easier to fund or publish a game. You can get paid instead of shut down.
Twinstiq, game news
Hell, they could just make a game in the same style with a marginally modified story to avoid the copyright lawyers
Until they end up getting lawyers breathing down their necks anyway on a claim of "nonliteral copying".
Wishful thinking. The trademark owner has the exclusive right to the IP. That being said, it would be perfectly legal to create a game in the spirit of Metal Gear without using any trademarks, assets, or source code that played very similarly.
So much human effort wasted on projects destined to die, which could have been spent on something more original and less obviously derivatively infringing...
Maybe, but consider this: why are you holding these unpaid enthusiasts to a far, far higher standard than what you're holding the game companies and Hollywood to?
All I've been seeing out of Hollywood and the game companies for the past decade now (at least) is derivatives. Granted, they're derivatives of stuff they actually own the rights to, but still: Hollywood can't come up with an original movie any more, it's all sequels, prequels, further installations in the same "universe", etc. Game companies are the same, everything they make now is yet another derivative of something that came out in the 1980s. This article is case-in-point: how many derivatives of Metal Gear have there been now? Metal Gear came out sometime around 1985!!! I'm still seeing Metroid games, and that came out even earlier. Didn't they just release a new Metroid?
So if the game companies can't come up with anything original like they did when the NES was brand-new, how do you expect a bunch of unpaid volunteers to do better?
Game mechanics can't be copyrighted
Counterpoint: Tetris v. Xio .
and pretty much nobody actually bothers filing patents for them.
Except Konami, which prevailed in a claim construction hearing in Konami v. Roxor that its patents for Dance Dance Revolution covered a competitor's game. Other games have patents, such as Dr. Mario (US Patent 5,265,888, since expired), the cylinder mode of Pokemon Puzzle League, Crazy Taxi (enforced in Sega v. Fox), and plenty of other rhythm games.
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).
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).
Yeah... yes. It's not about being genericized, it's about trademark law requiring it. They forfeit their rights to the trademark if they don't enforce it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Shutting down a fanmade game is one thing, but look at what became of Silent Hills. Then they went as far as insisting that the demo of it be remotely removed from people's consoles. I'm so done with console gaming. It's over.
PROTIP: That is a myth.
Wrong. "They let this other entity use it!" ... is a valid legal defense.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)