Eurogamer reports that indie developer teamPixel has launched a crowdfunding appeal on Indiegogo to purchase the rights to THQ's cult classic space strategy series Homeworld. While Sega now owns the studio that originally made the game, team Pixel hopes that it can raise some funds to secure the original game and re-release it on Steam and Good Old Games.

While THQ is going through an auction today to decide what happens with its various assets, one of those asset partners says that it is not part of the deal. Filing a formal complaint with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of Delaware, South Park Digital Studios said that South Park: The Stick of Truth cannot be sold off to a new owner without the studio's approval, because of stipulations in the contract it signed with THQ.

Gas Powered Games is on its way to staying alive, as its Kickstarter campaign for its latest game Wildman heads towards the $280,000 mark. Late Friday Chris Taylor posted a video on the Kickstarter page explaining that he had to lay off most of the company's staff and that the only way to save the company and hire those people back could be the Kickstarter campaign for its single and multiplayer action RPG. Since that appeal GPG has raised right around $69,000.

Norway is expected to reveal its new proposals to tackle file-sharing sites that offer copyright material which could include changes to copyright law to allow sites to be blocked, reports TorrentFreak.

A Republican House staffer who penned a memo on a different kind of approach to copyright law in November of last year found himself out of work as the new Congress was seated last Thursday and the new head of the Republican Study Committee - Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) - decided not to keep him on. He finally broke his silence on the whole ordeal to Ars Technica.

Yesterday we highlight the Twitter-based RPG called Tweeria in the ECA Newsletter. Described as a "lazy Twitter role-playing game" by its creators, Tweeria uses replies, retweets and activity to create Tweeria weapons, movements and attacks. Basically all you have to do to play the game is to be social on Twitter.

The madness surrounding the rights to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game franchise continues as GSC Game World weighs in on BitComposer's claim yesterday that it had locked down the rights to create games based on the franchise. Yesterday the company said that it had secured the rights to create games based on the book series Roadside Picnic - which S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is based on.

Confusion abounds on just who owns the right to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game franchise after BitComposer (who published the third title in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series Call of Pripyet), announced that it had acquired the license to the game franchise. The deal gives BitComposer exclusive worldwide rights to all video games carrying the STALKER name... or does it? There's some question as to whether the company actually owns the rights to the game, which was based loosely on the book series Roadside Picnic, or just the books.

When you develop a game without the permission of the copyright holder, chances are you will be in for some sort of legal action. Such is the fate of the My Little Pony MMO, which has been shut down after the developers of the game received a copyright and trademark infringement claim from Hasbro. The game was not approved by Hasbro. Fearing serious legal action the developers decided it would be prudent to just shut the game down.

Npeaches offers an excellent interview with Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) discussing some pretty important topics including the importance of net neutrality and intellectual property as it relates to the Internet.

The interview is 10 minutes 32 seconds long. You can watch it to your left in its entirety.

Source: Culture Cache Blog

Double Fine's Ron Gilbert wants the Monkey Island franchise back from Disney. The creator of the popular point-and-click adventure game franchise lost the rights to Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion after he left LucasArts. Then the company decided to sell the franchise off to Disney. Gilbert thinks that Disney doesn't know what to do with the franchise and is just letting it languish. He describes the situation as very sad.

"Yeah, I wish I owned Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion, you know?," said Gilbert.

Alloy Digital has completed the acquisition of the popular gaming website, The Escapist from Themis Media. Themis Media was advised on the sale by Redwood Capital and A. Buchholtz & Company, LLC. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Teasing an upcoming interview with Hotline Miami co-creator Jonatan Söderström, VG247 offers tidbits on the developer's positions on piracy and making games "just for money." Recently made headlines when he offered support to players who had pirated his game over on Pirate's Bay.

First he talks about why he makes games:

Jonatan Soderstrom, one of the co-creators of the popular indie PC game Hotline Miami, apparently noticed a thread over on The Pirate Bay complaining about bugs in his game. So what does he do? He joins in and promises a patch!. Yes, Soderstrom offers support even to people who pirated his game. From the thread (uncovered by PC Gamer):

Zynga has settled its trademark infringement lawsuit against French game development studio Kobojo, according to Gamasutra. Zynga sued the company for using the "Ville" suffix on its game PyramidVille - an action it took against plenty of other developers for including Dungeonville developer Night Owl. Zynga filed its lawsuit in May of this year, but PyramidVille originally released on Facebook 15 months before Zynga took the developer to court.

After settling its lawsuit against 6Waves, developer Spry Fox now owns the IP to Yeti Town, the game it claimed was a rip-off of its own Triple Town.

So, do you think Spry Fox is ever going to do anything with it?

Is it going to start pumping out Yeti Town games?  Might we see both Tripple and Yeti Town sequels?  Or will Spry Fox plop its heinie down on the Yeti Town IP, never allowing it to again see the light of day?

Last Thursday we broke the story that social and mobile game developers Spry Fox and 6Waves had quietly settled a lawsuit related to their respective mobile titles, Triple Town and Yeti Town. In its original lawsuit Spry Fox accused 6Waves' Lolapps of blatantly copying its match-three game Triple Town when it released its game Yeti Town.

It is shocking just how many gamers have at least one or two games lying around that they haven't finished or haven't played. In episode 24 of the Super Podcast Action Committee Andrew and EZK spend a fair amount of time talking about that topic and revealing the results of the latest GamePolitics poll. They also dissect the latest lawsuits including one against Turbine Entertainment and a settlement agreement between Spry Fox and 6Waves over some unauthorized cloning of a popular iOS app. FX Network's Archer also gets an honorable mention..

This week former Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, who is now chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) tried to emphasize that the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act are dead, buried and never to be pushed by his group in Congress again.

"My own view, that legislation is gone. It’s over. It’s not coming back," Dodd told Wired in an interview earlier this week.

He still insisted that the cause of these bills' defeat were due to online petitions and e-mail campaigns that he called "over the top."

Mark Methenitis, proprietor of the wonderful Law of the Game blog, will be crossing the pond to attend the International Bar Association Annual Conference in Dublin, Ireland (Sept. 30 - Oct. 5).

A report from Holland (uncovered by IT World Canada) reveals that the Dutch government plans to fight a proposed Canadian-European trade treaty because it contains language similar to what had been rejected earlier this year when the European Parliament voted down the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Rutgers–Camden law professor Greg Lastowka is conducting research on the intersection of copyright law and user-generated content and the legal perils that might be involved. His research is being funded by the National Science Foundation. But as games like LittleBigPlanet and Minecraft expand the levels of creativity that players can partake of, an old problem arises: some users will create content that infringes on copyrights. While fans see this as homage to worlds, characters, and storylines they love, the companies that hold those copyrights see it only as infringement.

In a new blog post, Sandra Fulton, a member of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, describes the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement as the "biggest threat to free speech and intellectual property that you’ve never heard of." Fulton makes a good point because U.S. trade Representatives negotiating the treaty and other countries are doing a hell of a job keeping the details of this trade treaty a big secret.

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is looking to bring the same kind of "magic" that it brought to SOPA (you know, like blocking web sites accused of infringement) by urging the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to include "IP Maximalist Positions" in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.

One of the most interesting games to deal with a horrible social issue (child abuse) is getting a make-over and a re-release. Edmund McMillen's critically acclaimed game The Binding of Isaac is being remade by a new team, with plans for a release on consoles and the PC sometime next year. One of the key features will be local co-op play.

At the beginning of this year as law enforcement agencies in New Zealand, the U.S., and Hong Kong worked together to shut down Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's file-sharing empire, it seized just about every asset the charismatic NZ resident owned - including all of his money. This naturally made it tough for Dotcom to pay his legal fees.

But a judgment today by the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand will give Dotcom some relief.

In an interesting feature over at Develop that lets developers interview other developers, Mobile Pie's Will Luton talks at length with Nimblebit co-founder David Marsh about running the small indie outfit. But the most fascinating part of the interview deals with Marsh's reaction to social game developer Zynga apparently copying the game Tiny Tower. The fun begins with a question about having their games cloned.

I wonder how the citizens of Rhode Island feel about free-to-play games... Ultimately their opinion is of paramount importance now that the state owns the rights to Curt Schilling's first MMO project, Copernicus. So what does free-to-play have to do with it? Well, apparently the plan for 38 Studios' first MMO was to launch it as a free-to-play game, according to Boston Magazine. At least that is what Schilling told the publication...

En Masse Entertainment has settled a lawsuit with NCsoft over its massively multiplayer game Tera. The company best known for Lineage and City of Heroes sued the publisher of the game over claims that former NCsoft employees (who were developing the game under a new studio called Bluehole) had swiped assets from Lineage III and used them in the creation of Tera. Apparently the two companies have come to some sort of amicable agreement.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed.

According to this Computer World Australia report, Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has some harsh words for the Australian federal government for its part in pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is currently in negotiations in the U.S. The treaty is an agreement between Pacific Rim countries such as Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the U.S.