Activision Blocks Fan-Made Game Project

[RobRich]

Activision secured rights to the King's Quest franchise after acquiring Vivendi Games, and now nearly two years later the company has issued a cease-and-desist order to the The Silver Lining project, which is a fan-made sequel to the video game series. Phoenix Online Studios, a group organizing the community-derived software development effort for the past eight years, had previously secured a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi back in 2005, though it appears Activision has no interest in continuing the license.

We have spent a lot of time recently reworking the material of The Silver Lining into episodic releases, with the first out of a planned five episodes completed, and submitted for review, and had hoped we would be able to bring our game to you, the fans, in the Spring of 2010.

[....]

Sadly, after eight years of dedicated work and even more dedicated fans, The Silver Lining project is closing down.

Source: The Silver Lining

[RedFury]

wait- what? Activision has nothing invested in this, has no interest in it, but for simple licensing is shutting a fan based project down? I'd be pissed if I had put effort into an 8 year project only to have some suit and tie douche @ Activision getting sick of seeing this little project creep across his desk intermittently?

[RedFury]

and I don't even give a shit about the game...never heard of it!

[nemowolf]

and I don't even give a shit about the game...never heard of it!

You must be underage ... Anyone worth their salt in PC Gaming back in the late 80s has played one of the EIGHT releases they had under the banner from 83 to 98. This game equals the epic story of FF.

[Aaron_8015]

Wow... way to win over the PC gamers... again.....

[tony_j15]

8 years and they never actually released anything? I hate to say it, but, part of me thinks it's their own damn fault. You can't sit in a legal gray area that long and not have something bad happen. After the first brush with Vivendi, that should have been the cue to release ASAP.
On the other hand, Activision is acting like the dicks they are. Thanks for screwing the PC crowd once again and squandering some good talent that you could have picked up cheap.

[RedFury]

Kings Quest is such a blanket title that it could apply to almost any game in the 80's that involved a sword I played in the days of 80's...grew up with the atari 2600 and touched a few early PC games along with Commodore 64 stuff.

The thing is, I hate RPG's, so I don't pay attention to the majority of them. I only got into FF because a friend played some of them, otherwise FF would be a dead franchise to me too, however, I'd have known about it due to pure marketing. You don't exactly see Kings Quest advertisements all over the place.

My point in all this? Hard work on something fan based where the parent company doesn't have to spend a nickel and it gets shut down is crap, no matter what the title. Let the fans take over that which you no longer wish to. Look at what happened with the Battlefield Mods...we got DICE out of it. Capitalism man, Capitalism!