Seething hate for ActivisionBlizzard

[tancients]

and likely to the fault of Bobby KlotDick too.

February 28th, 2010


To Our Fans:

In 2005, Phoenix Online Studios received a Cease & Desist letter from Vivendi Universal, the owners of the King's Quest IP, in regards to our work on The Silver Lining. We complied with the request, and over the months that followed, we were able to work out a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi that allowed us to continue our work on the game.

We have spent a lot of time recently reworking the material of The Silver Lining into episodic releases, with the first out of a planned five episodes completed, and submitted for review, and had hoped we would be able to bring our game to you, the fans, in the Spring of 2010.

Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and became the property of Activision. 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.

As before, we must and will comply with this decision, as much as we may wish we could do otherwise.

We cannot say enough how much we appreciate the support we have had over these years from our fans. Without you, we would never have gotten this far. There would be no game to develop, and no one to develop it for. You have been amazing and steadfast, and we will always remember that and appreciate it more than we can say.

Sadly, after eight years of dedicated work and even more dedicated fans, The Silver Lining project is closing down.

What the future holds for us, as individuals or a team, we cannot say. We have an amazing development team, however, filled with talented and hard-working individuals, and we hope the teamwork and rapport we’ve developed won’t go to waste. We hope that when we do know what the future holds for us, our fans will be there to enjoy what we can give them still.

Again, thank you all so much for everything. This has been a long and crazy road, full of more twists than we could’ve anticipated, but more triumphs and wonderful memories than we could’ve ever hoped for. And for that, to all of you and to everyone on our team, we will always be grateful.



Thank You,

The Silver Lining Development Team



In compliance with Activision's request, most of our forums are coming down. However, we are keeping a few new, empty forums open so fans can stay in touch with one another and with us. Please visit: www.tsl-game.com/forum/index.php?topic=8394.0

[korzic]

Just read about this myself, and while I am disappointed about its permanent cancellation, there's also a bit of relief on my part, as the game struck me as one that could (and probably would) be preaching from the beginning until the end. Still, I would've liked to see how it compared to the other King's Quest games. It's really a shame that all of their work on the game will never be publically released (outside of the demo), especially given that they worked on it for so long. Well, perhaps this whole thing will help should they decide to work on other projects.

[Lenalia]

*sigh*

My first thought was "It's Crimson Echoes all over again", but this is even worse -- they actually had a deal with Viviendi which made them pretty much good to go (unlike most fan projects, which can actually reasonably expect to possibly be shut down)... only to have it yanked out from under them in the end.

"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

I haven't been keeping that close an eye on it (I never played the demo), but considering the years of work they've put into it, expecting no pay at all and just putting together a tribute to a classic series, thinking they were okay to go ahead with it only to be crushed and have all of their work be for naught... yeah. :/

[Ashurei]

This is the first I'm even hearing of this project, but if what is being said here is true, it's a pretty massive-douche move on Act/Bliz's part. How do you give someone the go-ahead and then go "Ahhh... about that agreement, yeah. No. Nevermind, fuck that. Plz stop." a few years later? :/

[Mutagene]

The worst part is, you only ever see the good fan projects die like this. All the half-assed ones survive.

[Varion]

[Justin]

hahahahahah

[tancients]

It was fun to get to talk to Ken and Roberta again after all this time though. They recently finished a trip to Japan on their boat.

Activision said they wanted to support indie development, yet they go and do things like this...

[Ashurei]

kotaku.com/5573587/fans-at-last-will-find-the-silver-lining

WuBAM.

[tancients]

Hours and hours and hours late.

I admit I just bother to say anything here. haha

P.S. I REALLY need a decent looking site done before July 10th. Someone not busy send me a PM!

[HJ]

I don't even know what King's Quest is.

[HJ]

Hey man, don't give me the ellipses, at least I like Paper Mario!

But seriously, they're adventure games, I see, so I'd probably enjoy them. I'm assuming they don't suck if some guys were willing to spend so much time on a sequel.

[AllenSmithee]

Maybe they weren't so big in HJ's country? I know he's from Europe, so some places it might be more obscure than others.

King's Quest is pretty classic and great. My mom used to play the series, I've always wanted to pick her up a collection, of course it probably wouldn't be played too much.

At least I played through Myst with my mom, that was great! We were master solvers, although Riven was just too hard!

And yeah, King's Quest is pretty good, if you don't mind getting stuck forever, and dying. But they're actually good, from my memories (however vague), and what people have said.

[AllenSmithee]

Dude, Sierra, Roberta Williams, American, Duh

[AllenSmithee]

Heh. It's alright, it is just the big thing is that adventure games being American and on American computers and such. It wouldn't've been on IBM if she were British.

[Lenalia]

Back in the day, Sierra used to be located in Oakhurst, CA, near Yosemite National Park. Hence their logo:



...Trivia aside, it's cool to see that they've let them do this again... not as cool as it would've been for them to not C&D it in the first place, but still.

[tancients]

Kings quest was some of the very early renditions of adventure gaming. Sierra did a lot of trailblazing on the PC gaming front, lucasarts was just following behind with polish.

Manaic Mansion, one of Lucas art's earliest adventure games, was filled with far more ways to die and fail than even the first Kings Quest. By fail I mean, if you don't do X near the beginning of the game (or if you DO do X) then near the end of the game you're unable to beat it.

Sierra opted to leave ways to die in Kings Quest (and other Quest series), but try and make it easier to recover, easier to handle, and less painful. Neither way is particularly wrong, and I love them both equally.

Also, there are reimagined KQ1 and 2 around but I forgot the links. They're very good if you've never played either of those KQ and they've sort of updated the game in that way. Do give them a try.

[tancients]

Jun 27, 2010 19:10:33 GMT -5 Lenalia said:

...Trivia aside, it's cool to see that they've let them do this again... not as cool as it would've been for them to not C&D it in the first place, but still.

Basically, Activision was getting a large box worth of individual letters from lots of people every day as a petition/call-out/whatever you want to call it. People were cutting off revenue from anything Activision in addition. And anything that loses money, is bad.