Activision shuts down fan-made King's Quest sequel

This is sadly ironic. Didn't Kotick announce a 500,000 competition for indie developers? So the whole f**king time an indie fan-based game was being made? What's next Activision, going to club some baby seals?

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Kotick would lose sleep knowing that something cool was actually happening with one of his older games- he only cares about MW and Guitar Hero(s).

Yeah, honestly this is a similar incident to the Crimson Echoes fiasco almost a year ago. Another game about 3-5yrs in development, about to be released, gets shot down by the IP holder for no real reason other than "na na naa na naaaa naaa, we can do that if we waaaant".

This is actually worse since these guys were given permission by the old IP holders. Hell, I can't even think of a reason, even with my Tinfoil Cranial Stimulation Device on, as to why they would.

@devilsei

To be fair, companies have to consider their long-term interests. For old-school adventure gamers the KQ series is a rock-solid nostalgia kick, assuming they ignored the crapfest that was KQ VII and Mask of Eternity. If a fan-based KQ came out today, as far as marketing is concerned that will be the most current iteration of the franchise in the eyes of the public. If it sucks, that devalues their franchise rights. The bottom line is always the dollar and even if they have no intention to make more KQ games themselves, they'll likely be quite happy to entertain offers if some other studio comes inquiring about the rights.

Is it a dick move? Probably, it's Activision. But there's also some business logic in there as well, and that's going to make the final call every time. If the project ever actually made any real progress they can just change the character names and call it Monarch's Mission, Activision can't stop that.

In the meantime, there's always http://www.sarien.net/

Mr.Esc you forgot to pepper your numbered list with Kotick's superhuman feats of food intake.

Not really. Valve, for instance, has always let people mod their creations to the fullest extent. That's one reason I'd say they're so successful. However, as sad as it is, it's true that Activision would almost never allow this.

That's a fair point, although Valve always seems to consciously and clearly encourage and support modding (although it's not exactly the same thing as making a whole new sequel. Maybe that Black Mesa source project is pretty similar, though).

Maybe somebody wanting to make a tribute like this should gain permission from the IP owner before the project starts. That KINDA happened in this case, I guess, but it seems like knowing whether it was okay or not beforehand would be a good idea.

Difference here is that the fan made game had already come to an agreement once with the company that owned the rights (Vivendi), and had agreed to release it without any of the KQ branding to clearly show that it was not an officially developed KQ game. There was little chance of brand confusion because of the way that agreement was structured. The fan devs did everything in their power to protect the brand and to give in to the wishes of the rights holders, and they still get shut down.

Valve is letting a group completely remake Half-Life, using the Source engine.

The only thing they asked was they rename it from "Half-Life: Black Mesa" to another name (Black Mesa) so people wouldn't mistake it for an official release.

I say the guys doing this game should just let it slip out. Pass out a few CD's. If it gets uploaded, who are they going to sue? They just let their friends have a few copies, and if someone uploaded it, not their fault. Maybe change the name, but then they would know it was purposely released.

Then again, knowing Activision, they would probably sue the hell out of them for it anyway.

You mean the IPs they care nothing about?

"Activision said it didn't have any immediate plans to utilize the classic licenses (including King's Quest)"

Protecting this IP from what? Being created for free?

What if the game sucks? The image of the series is damaged.

Acosta, I don't buy that excuse.

You'd have to be quite ignorant to confuse a fan-game with an official, commercial release.

1. The fan-game will never be for sale. Even if you account for piracy, most people would be aware that official games of a franchise cost money.
2. The fan-game will likely acknowledge the original rights holder. They're not stupid, they're not going to claim they own this property.
3. The people Activision goes after wouldn't have much interest (if any) in King's Quest.
4. King's Quest has been dead for 12 years.
5. Holy crap, has the series really been left alone for 12 years? By now, the only people that would care about a revival of the series... WOULD BE THE FANS.

There really isn't a good reason for this. And for what it's worth, they were granted a non-commercial license from Sierra. Activision could at least honor that.

I would imagine if Activision were to revitalize the King's Quest series, this non-official version could potentially distract consumers from buying an official game. Like Acosta said, what if this fan made version sucks? That would be the lasting impression people have on the series. Not to mention this could potentially open the door for other fan-made versions of other Activision properties. It's a mixed bag, this whole situation. It's a shame really, those guys worked their ass' off.

@Captian and Omega: The thing is guys, Activision never releases sucky products now do they?

Well if you throw out Tony Hawk Ride and well all the ones that suck.

good idea, they should also add an auto-update option
if this game wins the competition and is getting released: update it instantly with a dragon thats taking a dump on the activision logo and add a sidequest where you have to kick a sir Codick out of his castle Bitchalot

Day one purchase.

But the agreement with Vivendi was clearly for a non-commercial release. The fanbase actually agrees the IP belongs to Activison and wanted to develop as a token of love for the game not to make money or reduce the hold of Activision on their IP.
Wow, you know after all Kotick said about "encouraging" indie developers this is what they then do. I wish Kotick and his lackeys get diarrhea. Activision is run by jackasses.
Well in Koticks defense, this is his daily deed for making games "not fun". Imagine a developer who worked on the original game and suddenly hears that some folks still remember the game he/she worked on and want to take it further. Then his corporate overlord says f* that. I am not making money off this so no way I am allowing this. Wow, everytime I think Activision cant sink any lower they surprise me.

Phil writes, "As much as it sucks that they got shut down I do understand why Activision did it. In copyright law if you ignore a known infringement you run the risk of weakening your ability to sue over future infringements."

Untrue. While there is such a risk under *trademark* law, there is no such risk under copyright. It sounds as though this group removed any branding and therefore were not making use of any King's Quest trademarks, so this would not apply. Activision definitely do not need to policy anything in order to retain their copyrights.

From this story, it is unclear to me how the fan project would infringe copyright. It is quite possible a court would rule that the project is non-infringing. Activision's permission might not be required. On the other hand, it is also possible a court would rule that it is infringing. But this is a prohibitively expensive thing for an amateur team to find out: in practice, the law is tilted in favor of the professionals with the money regardless of the merits of their case. The real flaw is not with Activision's behavior, but with a law that (in this case) prohibits creativity and speech without producing a corresponding benefit.

(I am not a lawyer, but I am a copyfighter.)

@Geof.

Ok, I stand corrected. Not being a lawyer I was not aware of the difference between Copyright and Trademark infringement.

If you had been to the site and played the demo before they got shut down you would have seen how the group had borrowed heavily from the original IP. There was no real doubt that there was a copyright or trademark claim to be made by the IP holder.

It's just a shame that the IP holder ended up being Activision.

Copyright or trademark issues are really moot here. They had been given a license to make the "sequel" by the prior IP holder. In doing so, they as the fan developers had acknowledged that the IP was someone else's and they had to abide by agreements in its usage. When Activision bought the company the IP became theirs and the devs here could not suddenly act like the IP was new or totally different than they had already signed an agreement on respecting. Activision had the rights to do this with their IP (as sad as that is). Making a game with the Kings Quest characters, etc was clearly an infringement if they ignored Activision's demands.

(I am a lawyer and I'm confident that these guys would have been destroyed by Activision had they continued the project without permission.)

Again, I don't think that anyone is saying that Activision had no right to issue the C&D order but rather that it was crappy of them to do so.

Right Phil - sorry for giving some reply to your comment beyond the basic - "activision bad".

O_o

Can't we all just get along?

Actually, Al Lowe was making a somewhat risque-looking adventure game back in 2006 (Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure) but his studio, iBase Entertainment, couldn't find a publisher for it. There's a few snippets of info at http://www.ibaseentertainment.com/ but it's essentially been dead since early 2007.

They likely can't publish the game themselves for safety (legal-wise) reasons.

I remember reading something similar when another fan project was shut down. The company made some comment about how they can't just publish/endorse themselves because of all the legal red tape. Since anyone from any old forum can suddenly claim to have a part in the game.

Most fan projects openly accept help from random people without any kind of legally binding contract signed first. Anyone could step up and sue the company for royalty rights claiming they made some part of the game, and might be hard to prove they didn't considering the open nature of the internet and many fan projects.

Still though, even if they can't publish a game or give it some kind of commercial endorsement, it doesn't mean they should be so quick to squash them outright. As others have said, it would be nice if the company could just send them a letter asking them to change a few names and characters.I doubt the company can trademark some generic beach location or the inside of a store.