A group of King’s Quest enthusiasts who have been working on their own content for the 1990s-era adventure game have been forced to abandon their project due to action from Activision.
A variety of King’s Quest games were released under the Sierra label in the 1990s. Volunteers began work on their project, dubbed The Silver Lining, back in 2002 under the name of Phoenix Online Studios, reports Kotaku. While initially they ran into problems with Sierra’s parent company Vivendi Universal—receiving a cease-and-desist order in 2005—a public backlash over the cancellation of the game more or less forced Vivendi to grant a non-commercial “fan license” to the project.
Everything remained status quo until recently, when Activision, which merged with Vivendi in 2008, issued a cease-and-desist to Phoenix Online, indicating “that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining.”
GP’s own legal guru Dan Rosenthal offered his take on the revocation of the non-commercial fan license:
It's always unfortunate when you have a lot of hard work on a fan project go to waste. Unfortunately the real problem here for Phoenix Online was the bad luck of Sierra changing hands from Cendant to Vivendi Universal to Activision Blizzard. Changes of ownership often bring with them changing priorities, and who knows what sort of future Activision sees for the IP. Like many independent studios, Phoenix Online simply wouldn't be able to afford the cost of ignoring the cease-and-desist letter and risking a potential copyright infringement lawsuit.
The real damage here, however, comes from the chilling effect that this sort of action places on fan studios operating under non-commercial licenses (or even worse, no license but a "wink and a nudge" from the IP holder). Now, every fan project going forward is going to be reminded of the Sword of Damocles over their heads from pouring their efforts into someone else's IP.
Comments
Re: King’s Quest-based Project Incurs Wrath of Activision
Vavle I'd imagine.
Until lobbying is a hanging offense I choose anarchy! CP/IP laws should not effect the daily life of common people! http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/
Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.
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http://zippydsm.deviantart.com/
Re: King’s Quest-based Project Incurs Wrath of Activision
Except that the larger corporations almost never revitalize the old games. They sit on the IP shouting at any one who comes close to it. Then backhand the fans by saying there isn't enough profit to make a restoration or reboot worthwhile. Yet there will still be average people who claim that since the companies own the Copyright they can do whatever they want and everyone should just shut up.
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Re: King’s Quest-based Project Incurs Wrath of Activision
Especially with Kotaku and Joystiq posting that Acti doesn't want to do anything with the IP of older games that they've gotten with their various purchases/merges. Which pretty much puts the kibosh on ALL Quest games and the sequels that they could have spawned.
Re: King’s Quest-based Project Incurs Wrath of Activision
Yeah, too many fan projects that had potential die because a company is sitting on and IP that they do NOTHING with.
It's a cylical problem. They series isn't making money because nothing new has come out in years or worse, since the first or second, and the companies say they won't make any more because the series isn't makimg money, which in the first place is because they won't make any more.
Re: King’s Quest-based Project Incurs Wrath of Activision
We need a set of rights that allow the public to post online un harassed by frivolous lawsuits, 2 things build the foundation of this ideal following the flow of money and understanding that the only way the public can in any practical sense infringe upon IP/CP is by trying to make money off it without a license. Trying to control every instance of distribution and copying makes a lop sided system where the courts must be involved on a regular basis.
There are 3 ways to do this one set percentage of quality and or amount of IP/CP’d item and ignore anything but direct sale. Two base fair use more on quality anything under 70% of retail quality that is not done for any profit. Or three base fair use more on “intent of profit” where you create a process where one can post and share anything online but may not use that item to gain any type of profit for any reason.
Though in these cases people need to really understand parodies and make the project a parody that can be easily moddfied into a fan remake, in this instance and others like it its rather easy to do that and get away with it.
Until lobbying is a hanging offense I choose anarchy! CP/IP laws should not effect the daily life of common people! http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/
Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.
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http://zippydsm.deviantart.com/