For everyone who owns fan project(s)..

please note, any fan project for no reason can be ceased and desist by copyright

http://gamerlimit.com/2009/05/chrono-trigger-fan-project-given-cease-and-decist/

IMO, I think that's not really message from Square Enix, and even if it's real, can they really stop a fan project? I bet they can't. Spread the work to torrents and they're totally screwed up!

thnx to [member in this forums who hides his name] for the warning

Idiots.

IDIOTS.

(Um, not a reference to you... talking about the idiots who issued the cease and desist)

Whether that is a legit order or not, what do gaming companies in general care about anyway, the art they are involved in? For the sake of the art? Or their business? GUESS.

This is nothing new. And garbage like this even goes on within the industry.

Like Harmony Gold whining about MechWarrior 5 because they own the rights to Robotech (yes, Robotech).

Like Nintendo's stance on emulation in their own words (http://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp)

This is why I haven't bought videogames, or other media new for years. And probably never will again.

I agree. How stupid can you get? Capcom doesn't mind fan stuff, heck they encourage it! So long as you don't make money off of their stuff, they don't care in the least. So it might be fake, but you never know, dumb things have happened before.

this remembers me when there was a fan made game about dragonball series on top of the quake 3 engine.
"bid for power" was pretty nice indeed, it was pretty popular
and i remember that bandai, sent a warning to the developer, and they were forced to change all the characters and all the dragonball references

that's insane..

lord_muad_dib wrote:

this remembers me when there was a fan made game about dragonball series on top of the quake 3 engine.
"bid for power" was pretty nice indeed, it was pretty popular
and i remember that bandai, sent a warning to the developer, and they were forced to change all the characters and all the dragonball references

that's insane..

Legally, they cannot "force" any fan group to "cease and desist" or change certain aspects of their project UNLESS they are trying to profit, copy & paste, or could substantially and effectively render anything the creators make unsellable (meaning the fan game is just too damn good). Generally, they fall under the Fair Use clause (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use) by means of both non-profit (unless there was proof that profit was being made) and the transformation definitive (meaning the project is more like a fan-fiction as opposed to a derivative). That said, there are certain things a fan project can do to ensure they qualify.

1) Include LOTS of new, original characters. This ensures that it's a transformation and not a derivative - the latter being simply another adventure with the same characters set in the same universe (you can have different "worlds" in the same universe, so that doesn't count).

2) Do not charge money or accept donations. Accepting donations is very risky since if you cannot prove that the money is ONLY going towards the development of the project, then it's grounds for a profit-based claim. Also, any left over money should either be returned to the donators or used for a second project.

3) Release the final product ONLY on fan sites as electronic-only. This will ensure that there is no production on the developers' ends for the copyright holders to claim infringement on the grounds that the fan release is saturating the market over their official and copyrighted releases. Companies would have to go after the fans themselves that are downloading, copying, and redistributing the game by physical means.

So all that said, any fan project with enough OC and not accepting donations will qualify as fair use. This is highly relevant to gorori's and Shadow Blade/Keisuke Nonohara's fan projects and they should take this into consideration (I can see the latter project doing so with original characters, a new storyline, etc.).

That's my final word on this subject.

I guess your explanation makes total sense!