The Lawyers Come A'knockin'
An interesting post on Destructoid this morning brings up that wonky world between making mods as a fan and intellectual property that gets lawyers into a foaming ferver.
Some fans of Microsoft’s Halo decided to start putting together the very neat idea of a Halo RTS called Halogen.
It’s all over now:
For the last three years, we’ve worked incessantly to bring you the best Halo mod that we could. There have been a lot of ups and downs, but somehow Halogen has always managed to come out kicking. The problem with using copyrighted intellectual property as a base for a fan project is that you’re very susceptible to legal action. We always figured that since Halogen was such a different take on the Halo franchise, we might manage to make it without incident. That changed today. Hours ago, we finally recieved the words we’ve been dreading since the mod started to get noticed. Microsoft has decided that we are infringing on the intellectual property of Bungie Studios and has asked us to stop development on Halogen.
Although I will firmly put my foot down and say this was corporate lawyers paying their own bills, a fair compromise could have been reached. These guys looked like they were on a path that would have benefited the franchise.
Will Wright, who never ceases to amaze me, at the Game Developers Conference this year said that Spore and Sims are designed with the very thought of modders in mind, because they are like an army of free labor to him. They enhance and extend the products life-cycle way beyond it’s natural life span.
Even if these guys had finished the product, the IP would still be that of Microsoft and/or Bungie, they could have swooped in once all was said and done, paid these guys if they were feeling generous or just held on to the program. They could have even released the product if it was good enough.
The way this was handled just seems mean.
Alexander
Posted to Video Games on 9 September 2006
Other stuff like this: halo, microsoft
