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Rights to make a remake

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:00 am
by oriel
Hi,


Haven't been on here in forever, but glad to see that it's still going on.


Anyways, I wanted to ask if the AGD team needed to obtain any rights from Sierra to remake their games. The reason I would like to know is because the Chrono Trigger remake project was canceled due to a a cease and desist order from Square Enix. Maybe they were just threatened with no grounds? I'm guessing you can remake a game but selling it is another story.



Oriel

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:32 am
by Erpy
We obtained permission to produce and distribute our remakes around 2003/2004. Or rather, were granted permission.

Image

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 3:19 pm
by MusicallyInspired
If the Chrono Trigger remake team were planning on selling their remake, they were doomed before they started. You can't sell something with intellectual property that isn't yours.

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 3:56 pm
by Anonymous Game Creator 2
A license holder of any IP (commercial or non-commercial) is completely within their rights to ask a third party to cease & desist from creating unauthorized or derivative spin-offs of their products.

We got lucky with Vivendi allowing us to continue, but my retrospective advice is don't bother making games based on the IP of other companies. Do something original. Making games based on IP is risky; if your work gets shut down, it goes to waste. You can't make any money from it, and it'll eat all your time! Square Enix probably did those guys a big favour by shutting them down early. ;)

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 4:06 am
by Brainiac
Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:Square Enix probably did those guys a big favour by shutting them down early. ;)
It's unfortunate that they didn't give the same temporal (heh-heh-heh) consideration to the Crimson Echoes "interquel" project; that one got canceled just prior to release.

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 12:52 am
by MagusRogue
Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:Square Enix probably did those guys a big favour by shutting them down early. ;)
While I agree with most of this post, I just wanted to say after a follower of Crimson Echoes for a few years, Square Enix gave them the big #$#$ you stick to them. They were working on it for 8 years, and SE sent them the Cease n Desist literally 1 month before the game was going to be released. Wasn't a case of stopping before they got started, it was more a case of being as brutal as possible and wasting all their time. Makes me feel real bad for the CE team.

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:02 am
by DrJones
MagusRogue wrote:
Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:Square Enix probably did those guys a big favour by shutting them down early. ;)
While I agree with most of this post, I just wanted to say after a follower of Crimson Echoes for a few years, Square Enix gave them the big #$#$ you stick to them. They were working on it for 8 years, and SE sent them the Cease n Desist literally 1 month before the game was going to be released. Wasn't a case of stopping before they got started, it was more a case of being as brutal as possible and wasting all their time. Makes me feel real bad for the CE team.
Well, I've got to say that it also happened with the Aliens total conversion for Quake on 1997, and you can find that game now on the net and on file sharing programs.

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:13 am
by MagusRogue
The devs unfortunately decided to fully comply with SE and delete all their files of the game. They may have lied, but they certainly seemed incredibly scared of SE and their sue-happy lawyers.

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:28 am
by DrJones
MagusRogue wrote:The devs unfortunately decided to fully comply with SE and delete all their files of the game. They may have lied, but they certainly seemed incredibly scared of SE and their sue-happy lawyers.
That would be incredibly stupid. Nothing stops them for playing their own game, and I've done quite a few games for my sole satisfaction.

Re: Rights to make a remake

Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 7:27 pm
by AGP
You know the funny thing is that I spent MONTHS having my lawyer call them and send them faxes regarding the rights to Quest for Glory and I got zero responses. He'd call them and as soon as he said "copyright" he would be transferred to someone's answering machine. We never mentioned numbers and yet never even got a call back.