Cease & Desist Letter

[Magus_Brokenhart]

Hmm. Are SE's recent souless products so pathetic that they perceive a SNES hack as a threat? To put it in the words of Family Guy's creator, "That was an incredibly colossal dickish move.". Just because they have "legal" justification does not mean they have to trample over their fans after having stepped on doggy poo.

Let's not hate the product, but the company. I mean, the creator of Disney's Gargoyles goes through similar things. Disney (Which has also been crapping out mediocre stuff lately) will not make anything of Gargoyles, but then won't let the original creator do anything with the product. It sucks to have such artistic works crushed by cold corporate reasoning.

While this is very bad news, I won't let it get me down too much. CTDS didn't sell too bad, and they did a little bit over a port with it; They have at the least vague interest in the franchise. There is a small chance they will be making a remake of CC, or maybe even a sequel. Valkyrie Profile was ignored for many years before they came out with two games out of the blue. That brought me unfathomable joy. Maybe SE can do it again.

[ZeaLitY]

Magus22, just link tot he places you've posted so I can read the responses. Translating would be great since GlitterBerri is in Tokyo.

This just topped the gaming subreddit and is #3 on my reddit frontpage.

[Uboa]

Would it be a good idea to start releasing some gameplay videos while this is getting some press? 

[Vehek]

Some topics not by Magus22 which I found through Google:
http://forums.lostlevels.org/viewtopic.php?t=2029
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=361226
http://forums.qj.net/general-gaming-discussion/150661-chrono-compendium-projects-receive-c-d-square.html

[mav]

Like FaustWolf said, it's educational to research this stuff. But I don't want people to get any false hope out of this kind of discussion. We're a bunch of kids and twenty-somethings looking up legal trivia on the Internet. Most of us have no clue how to correctly interpret legal language. We have no organization and limited research capabilities. On their side, Square Enix has an entire phalanx of experienced lawyers who have dealt with exactly this kind of issue many times before. They have most of the legal precedents working on their side, and boatloads of cash. We're outgunned fifty to one and we don't even have the money to play in the first place.

Exactly--this is why I didn't want to reply to begin with. We get so caught up in what we perceive as right or wrong that we lose site of reality. The fact is that this is a very hard fight, and we really have no one to fight it. "We" aren't even an entity: we are just a bunch of people meeting on a forum, we have no legal knowledge, we have no lawyer, and we're too emotional to think rationally. All we can do is whip up fancy legal terms and hope someone is suicidal enough to wanna represent us. It's not like Square gonna come after all of us for a legal battle: they're gonna go after the higher-ups on the Crimson Echoes team and the higher-ups on this board and prosecute and persecute the fuck out of them. And frankly, that isn't fair. Furthermore, all this legal nonsense we're using to defend ourselves will only really help us in a court case, and I doubt it'll come down to that.

Ideally I just wanna ask SE some questions: like why exactly is this copyright infringement, why they chose to target this specific hack, and how they found it (it's everywhere, so I guess when they found it would be a better question). But those questions probably aren't worth SE's time.

[DRMProd]

I won't buy any, and I mean ANY of their games from now on... Maybe SE can learn a bit from Capcom. and let their fans enjoy some of this things.

[Samopoznanie]

Maybe SE can learn a bit from Capcom. and let their fans enjoy some of this things.

I'm out of the loop it seems. What does this refer to exactly? 

[Magus_Brokenhart]

Capcom responded that it considers games like M.U.G.E.N as fan fiction. They are okay with it. Capcom is more open-minded with the needs of the fans.

[tushantin]

Sad thing is it's not just them either. I wonder, is there ANY company that'd allow for stuff anymore? Sega's all I know of(namely Sonic Team, but c'mon, Sonic's in the corner).

As said earlier in this thread, Vivendi Games allowed a team to make a King's Quest fan sequel after initially sending them a C&D letter. The team and their fans had somehow managed to negociate a "fan licence".

This caught my attention. (Boy, I'm gone for ONE night, and this thread's flooded!)

And Magus_Brokenhart, you're right. There has to be some way to acquire a "Fan License", like most professional quality Doujins have, including Newgrounds for animation. Of course acquiring a license would mean being bound by certain restrictions, but that's okay, right? I mean, many open source software contain their own license free for use. As long as the industry along with the legal offices and fanbase recognizes this as an uncanon "Doujin work" they'd might approve of it.

Is there any way to acquire such license for Chrono Compendium?

[Magihunter]

What a terrible way to end my weekend. Here I was looking forward to the release as well. This gives me all the more reason to pursue my goal of creating a development studio and outshining the shit out of SE. My childhood was filled with superb memories of the good old SNES days and fantastic Square RPGs. Sadly, my outlook on SE has been marred by mediocre games and stunts like this that they pull.

[Ema]

[Magus_Brokenhart]

I mean, Capcom even used fan made remixes of Super Street Fighter II for the HD game that came out not too long ago. Why can't they both strive to make money, and keep the customers that give them the money happy? You can't just take and not give.

[Yourgingerestfan]

They Internet stalked Zeality ......Are they even allowed to do that ?

[Magus_Brokenhart]

The internet is full of liberty. Just like you can replicate games with emulators, I suppose you can look up on the information of anyone who has been part of the internet. If they can do that, they should use their resources for more constructive means. Maybe they could do some polls, or talk to the fans to see what they actually WANT to help their BUSINESS needs.

[Ema]