Unofficial Fan created 'King's Quest' Sequel given approval by Vivendi

I must say this is not "off-topic" at all!

It is something all the fan projects (especially the ones nearing completion like WC Saga, and Standoff), and of coure all WC fans should take into account:

We CAN make it happened!

(in case some sould try to stop us :) )
 
Neat story. I think I've only played one of the very first King's Quest games (I certainly couldn't tell you which one). It's great that a group of dedicated people were able to make something happen.
 
Eh, I don't think you guys are reading the fine print... or even the big print, for that matter :). If this is a victory for the fans... then I pray WC fans will only ever know defeat.

I mean, let's look closer at this. The project in question was no different to Standoff, the Privateer Remake, or any other WC fan project. It was to be released for free - and that's still the case, after their "victory" in the negotiations.

A second aspect - they were going to call it King's Quest IX. After their "victory" in the negotiations, they're no longer allowed to call it King's Quest IX. They can't call it King's Quest anything. In other words, Vivendi has graciously granted them the right to release something that Vivendi wouldn't legally be able to stop them from releasing. They told them, "ok, you can release your King's Quest project, but you can't call it a King's Quest project"... that's no victory for the fans, that's total defeat!

Let's look at WC now. EA has never tried to intervene in any fan project, WC or otherwise, provided the fans did not attempt to earn money out of it (which the KQIX people weren't doing either). So, would we really want EA to graciously agree to let us release Wing Commander: Standoff, on the condition that we don't call it Wing Commander: Standoff? I think not.

Note, mind you, that it's probable that if somebody made a game called "Ultima X", EA would intervene because the X implies a direct sequel. And in such a situation, EA would probably act just like Vivendi, requiring you to either kill the project or change it so that it doesn't violate their copyrights. The reason is simple - "Ultima X" is a title they may want to use in the future. So, they can't allow you to use it, in the same way that they can't allow you to make money off such a project, because it would set a legal precedent. Additionally, once they've intervened, they have to go to the full extent - they won't say that it's all right for you to still call your project "Ultima" but not "Ultima X", because this too would set an undesireable legal precedent, which might later make it harder for them to protect their copyrights in other situations.

So, ultimately, the big lesson in all this is - don't do anything that gives the copyright-owner a reason to intervene. The fact that you dodged a bullet is no reason to celebrate - because it still means you did something stupid to get someone to fire the bullet at you in the first place.
 
I don't know too much about how the King's Quest community works, but there'd be some backlash here if most people tried to position their fan project as Wing Commander 5/6/7 like these people did.
 
Quarto said:
A second aspect - they were going to call it King's Quest IX. After their "victory" in the negotiations, they're no longer allowed to call it King's Quest IX. They can't call it King's Quest anything. In other words, Vivendi has graciously granted them the right to release something that Vivendi wouldn't legally be able to stop them from releasing. They told them, "ok, you can release your King's Quest project, but you can't call it a King's Quest project"... that's no victory for the fans, that's total defeat!
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Your opinion surprises me, Quarto. I thought you understood legal proceedings better than that.

As I understand it, Vivendi completely owns the intellectual property to Kings Quest, much like EA owns the IP to Wing Commander. These fans could not legally release their project without obtaining permission from Vivendi. Granted this has never been a problem typically, but releasing fan created mods/projects using licensed IP is illegal unless express permission is obtained.

I think a lot of people have come to expect that if the team is creating the game and releasing it for free that they have the right to do so. This is not true. This is no different from releasing Star Wars fan movies and fiction. It just happens that Lucasarts has allowed it BECAUSE the creators aren't making money off of their ventures. If Lucasarts wanted to they could legally demand all fan movies be stopped and could file law suits against them.

The facts are this: You cannot use someone else's currently licensed intellectual property without permission...this is regardless of whether you profit from using it or not. If EA decided to stop all the WC fan creations they legally would be completely within their rights. If they decided that they didn't want you releasing Standoff they are completely within their legal rights to request you to stop. You have absolutely no legal standing that would hold any type of water in a copyrights court. Standoff's team would be found guilty of copyright infringement on multiple accounts. Whether or not you profited from the release of Standoff would likely only be used to determine the extent of damages.

Does this mean I agree with the decisions? No, but it is what would be found legal in a court of law.
 
This discussion thread (page 2 is linked) has some interesting opinions that appear to be by César Bittar, a Project Director and Coordinator of "The Silver Lining"
http://forums.adventuregamers.com/showthread.php?t=12233&page=2

then again, gathering all the publicity lead to the big following, and this was what ultimately saved the project. Otherwise, if we had kept the low profile, and not be known by a lot of people, we would still be shut down. Vivendi reacted directly to the press and the fans.

Having had a change of name before wouldn’t have changed things. We would have still gone through this. The Cease and Desist would have come whether our name was King’s Quest IX or not.

Personally, whether it’s called “King’s Quest IX” or “The Silver Lining”, I still fail to see your point. We are still making a sequel based on Roberta William’s work. And by the way, Roberta has seen more than what you think she’s seen. Her blessings have come not only once, but repeatedly over the years. Both from her and from Ken. You can ask them so you are clear of doubts.

Am I telling other fan-games to go through this? No. It’s risky, and the same way we were saved, we could have been shut down and left shut down. At the end, it’s up to the directors of each game what you guys want to do.

Anyhow, I just wanted to thank everyone for their incredible support. I’ve made the promise that this game will see the light of day, and I’m known for keeping my promises!

Cesar Bittar
Phoenix Online Studios
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entry #36
There are other interesting comment on page 3 of that thread

You can find more information about César Bittar by clicking meet the staff near the bottom of this page (then click meet the staff again then click directors)
http://www.kqix.com/team/
 
Maj.Striker said:
Your opinion surprises me, Quarto. I thought you understood legal precedent better than that.

As I understand it, Vivendi completely owns the intellectual property to Kings Quest, much like EA owns the IP to Wing Commander. These fans could not legally release their project without obtaining permission from Vivendi.
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I believe you missed my point. Yes, Vivendi could easily stop them from publishing King's Quest IX: Silver Lining. But they couldn't stop them from publishing Silver Lining, even if it was filled with characters from previous King's Quest games. Therefore, the fans' "victory" is actually worthless - essentially, Vivendi has granted them permission to publish the game provided that they don't infringe Vivendi's copyrights. Such permission has no value, obviously, because you don't need Vivendi's permission to publish a game that doesn't infringe Vivendi's copyrights.

Why is this the case? Because you don't copyright characters, places, or anything like that - you copyright a particular work. When you copyright a novel, you copyright the whole thing - the combination of plot, characters, settings, and writing style. Your copyright is violated if somebody steals this combination - but if somebody uses just one of those elements, you have virtually no case.

Essentially, Vivendi would have to prove that Silver Lining is blatantly derivative of their work. And this wouldn't be easy - King's Quest (any one of them) is just a very, very generic fantasy story told as an adventure game. The series is filled with characters and creatures from half a dozen different mythologies - in other words, the series itself consists mainly of derivative material. Needless to say, it's pretty hard to sue someone for copyright violation when the copyrighted material is primarily derived from other, public domain material.

As long as it was called King's Quest IX: Silver Lining, it was an open-and-shut case - the creators were admitting to it being a derivative work, and furthermore claiming that it supercedes King's Quest VIII. However, when it's just called Silver Lining, Vivendi's case becomes much, much weaker. Vivendi would have a very hard time proving that their copyright was violated in the first place... and even if they succeeded, these guys could almost certainly argue that it's fair use, because their game is substantially different (new plot, new settings, new characters, new game engine, et cetera), and furthermore it's non-commercial (which, while it isn't the most important consideration in such cases, still counts for a lot). Finally, it doesn't in any way damage Vivendi's profits from the previous King's Quest games, nor would it damage Vivendi's profits from future titles.

In short, the fans are happy because they won a right that they already had.

Mind you, all this would be very different in the case of, say, Standoff. I very much doubt that Standoff would be defendable under fair use, because it's a mod - we're directly taking EA's property and modifying it for our use. And while it's all right to quote somebody's copyrighted work, we obviously go beyond quoting ;).
 
From a comment that appear to be by César Bittar, a Project Director and Coordinator of "The Silver Lining"
http://forums.adventuregamers.com/showthread.php?t=12233&page=3

We thank Vivendi for giving us this chance. They undoubtely are one heck of a great company!

Oh, and by the way, we still get to use "King's Quest" in our title. The full name is "The Silver Lining: A game inspired by the King's Quest Series"

. . .

César Bittar
Phoenix Online Studios
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entry #44
 
That's just plain laughable, though.

I could make a game called "Bogfest 613: A game inspired by the King's Quest Series", and Vivendi wouldn't touch me. There'd be no negotiations, they simply wouldn't have a case, because all I'm doing is saying their work inspired me. So again, they're just being granted the rights they already had.

That having been said, that thread certainly explains their bizarre joy about this whole affair. They wanted the publicity that Vivendi cracking down on the little guy brings - and that, for a fan project is nothing short of despicable. Seems they were far more concerned about glorifying themselves and their project than they were about making a contribution to their favourite series - that's really just plain awful.
 
I could make a game called "Bogfest 613: A game inspired by the King's Quest Series", and Vivendi wouldn't touch me. There'd be no negotiations, they simply wouldn't have a case. Again, they're just being granted the rights they already had.
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So if someone made a game called "Bogfest: A game inspired by the Star Wars Trilogies" and filled it with characters named Darth Vader, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, etc. who used a Death Star, light sabers, Tie fighters, X-wings, etc. and spoke often about the force and looked & spoke like the Star Wars characters of the same name, the people who own the rights to Star Wars wouldn't be able to do something about it?
 
st3lt3k said:
So if someone made a movie (or game) called Bogfest and filled it with characters named Darth Vader, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, etc. who used a Death Star, light sabers, Tie fighters, X-wings, etc. and spoke often about the force and looked & spoke like the Star Wars characters of the same name, the people who own the rights to Star Wars wouldn't be able to do something about it?
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Well, firstly, I certainly never implied anything like that (especially in the post you quoted - in that post, I was referring only to the ridiculous notion that Vivendi could do anything about someone claiming that their work was "inspired" by King's Quest. It's not a copyright violation to admit being inspired by something) - I specifically explained that what makes the King's Quest copyrights so hard to defend is the fact that it's a very generic fantasy story filled with characters and creatures derived from various mythologies. Star Wars is quite different in this regard - it's a much more original story, and so George Lucas would have a better case against any perceived copyright violators.

That having been said... yes, depending on how much of the Star Wars setting you use, and on how big a portion of your work the Star Wars stuff forms, it's possible that you'd be able to get away with it. Obviously, not in the specific case you describe, because what you describe is pretty blatant copyright violation. But yes, a great many of the Star Wars fan movies and fanfics would be able to get away in court by invoking fair use.


However, in order to get away with it in court, they would have to avoid calling their movies and stories "Star Wars: Whatever". It goes without saying that most fans don't want to do this. We fans want to refer to the source material. We don't want to make "Standoff: It's not Wing Commander, but... nudge nudge, wink wink". We want to make "Wing Commander: Standoff". And the way we achieve this goal is by making sure that we don't do anything that would make EA angry. That's why my reaction to this whole thing is two-fold - on the one hand, I find it extremely funny that anyone would paint this as some kind of victory for the fans, and on the other hand, I am genuinely angered by the attitude of these people, who went out of their way to get Vivendi to attack them. I don't think you can even call them King's Quest fans - they're simply exploiting the property to advance their careers.
 
Theoretically someone could use the Star Wars characters, vehicles, weapons, force concept, etc. as long as the storyline was sufficiently different and be covered under "parody" as far as copyright is concerned. Beyond that you could create a work inspired by the characters, story, universe etc. w/o infringing on the copyrights of Star Wars as long as you didn't cut and paste from the originals. On the other hand either case could infringe on trademarks if the name Star Wars was used or if it was implied (or seemed to imply) that it was a part of the "Official" Star Wars.

In reality the costs to take any such cases to court would likely destroy any independant before it would matter. (Esp. against a large entity like LucasArts)
 
DanielBlue said:
Theoretically someone could use the Star Wars characters, vehicles, weapons, force concept, etc. as long as the storyline was sufficiently different and be covered under "parody" as far as copyright is concerned.
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I've been waiting for someone to cite Space Balls as a example of what you can do with parody here.
 
Yeah, I guess I was misreading you, Quarto. In that sense they're completely within their rights to release their game. I'm not really familar enough with the King's Quest games to know exactly what copyright infringements would or would not be actually utilized. I was thinking that their game was basically the same as Standoff would be to WC and on that grounds Vivendi would be completely within their legal rights to give a cease and desist order. (As in fact, EA would be if they chose to give one to the Standoff team).
 
to be covered under the protections of a parody you must change ALL content by at least 20%. When a franchise is copyrighted (using starwars as an example) ALL content provided by the copyright holder is covered under the rules of implyed copyright and ARE protected as individual copyrights.. if EA went after fans after all this time for making wing commander games they'd have a hard time in court simply because they did not press their copyright claims at the outset of the fan mods. They waived their legal claim to sue on copyright infringement when they let fans get away with it for years and years.

The same can be said of starwars.. fan projects have been in the works for decades.


But if George Lucas had decided to shut it down at the outset and specificially did so, there would be NO fan projects today without a team of lawyers being involved.

Thankfully many companies are as open minded as George Lucas.
 
One important item on the fans' side of the scale, however, is that Ken and Roberta Williams have explicitly endorsed this project. Even though they do not currently hold the rights to the King's Quest series, they are recognized by all as the original creators of it.
 
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