Activision Kills Fan-Made King's Quest Game

01 Mar 2010 at 12:00:24 by Tim McDonald

The Silver Lining's development team has complied with an Activision request to cease production on the fan-made King's Quest adventure.

The game's official site shows only a post from the development team which details Activision's request to "cease production and take down all related materials."

The King's Quest fan-game has been in production for the past eight years, and has been the subject of a cease-and-desist before, when Vivendi Universal owned the King's Quest rights.

At that time, however, fan outcry led Vivendi to issue a non-commercial licence to the team, granting it permission to continue work.

King's Quest is now owned by Activision, however, and according to the post on The Silver Lining's website, the publishing giant wants to revoke that licence.

"After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website," reads the post on The Silver Lining.

This has also resulted in the closure of the forums, although the team is apparently keeping "a few new, empty forums open so fans can stay in touch with one another and with us."

Whether or not the project will ever see the light of day is debatable. While the legal issues could potentially be avoided by removing all references to King's Quest in the game, beta tester Tage7 notes on the forums that potentially infringing material includes "the character names and likenesses, the locations possibly including several map layouts, and the background story that TSL's story is intimately woven into," which would make changes difficult without a serious rewrite.

We'll keep you posted. It's worth noting that the last King's Quest game was 1998's Mask of Eternity, and that King's Quest 4, 5, and 6 hit GOG.com last week.

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