[Goober5000]

See here:
http://www.kqix.com/home.php

I am outraged.  This is yet another example of abuse of copyright law, and I happen to think what the KQIX team were doing was perfectly legal.  Another big company throwing its weight around with no regard for common moral decency.

How do you go about submitting something like this to Slashdot?

[Goober5000]

By the way, they've been working on this for nearly five years and had planned to release it in December...

An ambitious fan game, in development since 2000 and nearing completion has been shut down by Vivendi Universal Games (a.k.a Sierra Entertainment). King's Quest IX was to be an alternative ending to the popular King's Quest series. Some project stats: 40+ volunteer staff, 2000+ page script, 9 chapters, 450 characters, theme songs...

http://digg.com/gaming/Vivendi_shuts_down_BIG_King_s_Quest_fan_game

[Falcon]

That's sad...

[achtung]

Never heard of the game but that **** is rediculous.

It's still sad though:blah:

[Mefustae]

Seriously, was Vivendi just waiting to shut it down just short of the release date...?

[Night Hammer]

ouch, thats a lot of wasted time:sigh:

[Annorax]

Originally posted by Mefustae
Seriously, was Vivendi just waiting to shut it down just short of the release date...?

Probably... it lets them steal everything that'd been made so far and sell it without any development costs.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Swantz
Never heard of the game but that **** is rediculous.

Look it up on Wikipedia.  It was the best-selling adventure game series of all time until Riven came out.  The last release was in 1996, so you'd have to be a little older (or a fan of classic computer games) to know about it.

[Mefustae]

If you've never played Kings Quest or one of its sister games, uninstall every game on your system and burn the CDs, you no longer deserve to be a gamer...

[karajorma]

Let's hope the bastards don't hear about TBP then.

[Unknown Target]

I don't think Sierra owns any liscenes for Babylon 5. They might own the game liscence, but I don't think that allows them to shut down the mod.

But yea - Sierra/Vivendi sucks, ever since they started to get a more active in the game dev world (read: Homeworld 2).

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Originally posted by karajorma
Let's hope the bastards don't hear about TBP then.

It might be worth the effort finding out what the law says about these things outside US. For example, I'm quite confident that finnish laws allow the existance of projects like TBP. And I'm pretty sure that's the case, otherwise Paramount would have already hunted down the crew of Star Wreck and hanged them in front of their HQ.

[TrashMan]

They should all be lined up against the wall and shot...

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Lt.Cannonfodder
It might be worth the effort finding out what the law says about these things outside US. For example, I'm quite confident that finnish laws allow the existance of projects like TBP. And I'm pretty sure that's the case, otherwise Paramount would have already hunted down the crew of Star Wreck and hanged them in front of their HQ.

Star Wreck should be legal even in the US under the provisions for parody and satire.  But even if it's not parody or satire, projects like Star Trek: New Voyages or Starship Exeter are surviving just fine.

The KQ9 project is legal under fair use and reliant estoppel.  But the law never stopped anyone before...

[Galemp]

I doubt it. It's using Vivendi's Intellectual Property. The KQ9 team doesn't have the resources to fight an obviously imbalanced legal battle; this isn't just a mod, it's an attempt to use someone else's IP for their own gain. They have enough respect for Sierra to honor the Cease and Desist order and bow out gracefully. I don't know how many of us would do the same thing if THQ came a'knockin.

Now, if the KQ9 team wants to wrap up the project in secret and release it through P2P services and back channels... well, not much they can do then.

[Goober5000]

They're not using it for their own gain, though.  They're doing an independent project for free.  That's allowed under fair use.

[karajorma]

I don't think it is actually Goober. You're not allowed to use someone else's intelectual property even for free against their wishes. It counts as a derivative work and as such isn't legal without the permission of the owners.

Now personally I think Vivendi were complete dickheads to shut the project down especially if they are thinking to release a compilation of the old games.

This team and its supporters no doubt constitute a fair percentage of their fanbase and it's never a good idea to piss your fanbase off for no good reason.

On top of which this game might have brought in new people who would then go out and buy the old games.

To be honest I think this was a really bad PR move by Vivendi.

[Annorax]

Originally posted by Goober5000
Star Wreck should be legal even in the US under the provisions for parody and satire.  But even if it's not parody or satire, projects like Star Trek: New Voyages or Starship Exeter are surviving just fine.

Paramount's execs/lawyers are intelligent enough to realize that even dreck like Star Trek: Hidden Frontier will keep people interested in their now-dormant franchise long enough so that when they finally revive it five or ten years down the road, the new series or movie will be that much more popular and make them more money.

Vivendi, on the other hand... either they think they can finish up KQ9 themselves and release it without having to pay for the bulk of development, or they're just having fun pissing off their fanbase. If they had an ounce of brains, they'd have waited to C&D KQ9 until a few weeks AFTER they'd released the KQ compliation. Who knows... maybe some of the people they've pissed off would've bought it?