Descent fanremake C&D'd

Hello Doomworlders,

Since we all love games from the 90 I reckon Descent has a special place in your hearts. I myself only played it when I was little so I have very vague memories of it but I know that a lot of you are big fans of the game.

So the game's most devoted fans decided to remake the game, calling it Sol Contingency. Mind you, this isn't some ragtag texture and shitty 3D model update, all you see here is extremely professional and modern and they made a lot of progress on it.

Unfortunately they recieved a Cease and Desist letter from interplay in the last days, claiming the remake is unauthorized and therefore illegal, shitting on all their hard work.

Every time I hear this kind of news it sickens me to the core, especially if the project is as professional is this. It happened with the Doom 3 System Shock 2 remake, it happened with an extremely ambitious Lord of the Rings Skyrim total conversion that had a huge team of about 50 and now this. This screams to me "stop making better games than we do"

All is not lost though, while Interplay reserve the rights to the Descent IP, they do not reserve the rights to the concept so they will continue to work on the game but make new levels and models, kinda like the Dark Mod.

So how do you guys feel about this?

Check out this site for some extremely impressive stuff

http://preparefordescent.com/

That must be heartbreaking. It looks fucking fantastic. If they get a kick starter going for the full game I'll donate on general moral, decency principles. That's pure ugly to treat fans in such a manner. Fuckers must be salty about being outclassed.

descent is one of my fav games, so im upset about this, but at least they will make their own game now. ive always hate when big greedy companies cancel fan efforts that were obviously not going to affect their profits anyway, this is just like when hasbro forced the cancellation of fighting is magic

It actually wouldn't be a good idea to create a kickstarter for it because that will just fuel the fire, the whole point would've been a project without profit or any sort of gain which is also the reason why this bullshit shouldn't even be happening.

Rather surprised that nobody cares.

Interplay, a company involved in half a dozen legal issues of its own making decides to shut down a fan project that would not have financially damaged the people who didn't develop the damn game in the first place, and aren't likely to support a similar project ever again.

Yup.

Awesome project, shitty move. Like you said, they're pissed that others are making better games than they are. That's pretty much all there is to it - There's no way this would have tolled them financially..

I'm kind of on the fence about this.
It of course sucks for the team and you could argue that Interplay is being petty. That said, Descent is theirs to do with whatever they please. If they want to be the ones who decide what a Descent game is and what goes into it, it's their right to do so. I'm not necessarily against that on the moral side of things.

There is a huge difference between

A) building a mod for an existing game that reuses and modifies the assets of the base game and
B) building a game from the ground up and leeching off of another game.

It is also my general position that if you have the skills, know-how and tools to build a game from the ground up you would do best to create your own thing. No matter how good you are or how faithful it is, the property is not yours. The reasons behind the C&D are irrelevant.

Getting a cease and desist will be a big bump on the road for them now, but down the line it could be the best thing that ever happened to them.

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be getting a much better game now that they're doing their own thing.

If Interplay were smart they would hire them to make the remake official and print some money.

I read on their site that they were attempting to have negotiations after Interplay originally contacted them. Interplay wouldn't have even had to do any work if they would have just gave them a green light, and they could've profited. Doesn't make sense.

They can make a spiritual successor without namedropping constantly... They even registered the domain name based on descent and not their project name. I'd c&d them, too.

Shaviro said:

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be getting a much better game now that they're doing their own thing.

Probably my opinion summed up there.

Good games don't need remakes, especially if they're still readily available (which the Descent games are.)

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Good games don't need remakes, especially if they're still readily available (which the Descent games are.)

Not only are the games available, there are source ports for them, too!

Doom fans should like descent gameplay and aesthetic IMO.

Shaviro said:

It is also my general position that if you have the skills, know-how and tools to build a game from the ground up you would do best to create your own thing. No matter how good you are or how faithful it is, the property is not yours. The reasons behind the C&D are irrelevant.

Getting a cease and desist will be a big bump on the road for them now, but down the line it could be the best thing that ever happened to them.

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be getting a much better game now that they're doing their own thing.

Precisely what I was going to post.

Prepare to go down once more into the depths of the Post-Terran Mining Corporation's lunar mines and laboratories, as this retelling of the classic action game DESCENT plunges you into a conspiracy in the middle of an alien invasion. Mining robots have become killing machines and the PTMC needs your help to counter their destruction.

Yeah, this seems like it was ill-considered on his part. The fact of the matter is that he's infringing on Interplay's trademarks by claiming this is a remake of Descent, using the PTMC name, etc. Look at the domain name for the website he's using for example. Why is it preparefordescent.com and not solcontingency.com?

The way trademark law works, companies are actually required to defend their trademarks, otherwise they can lose the rights. If they don't send letters like these to anyone who uses the "Descent" name, someone could just come along, develop a "Descent 4" and then (in court) claim that Interplay don't have any rights to the name any more because they didn't bother to defend it.

If he wants to make a new game inspired by Descent, then great. Interplay don't own the concept of a Descent-style hybrid shoot-'em-up/FPS. But he can't just go ripping off the Descent story, using the Descent/PTMC trademarks and so on. He has to make it original.

Yeah, should've just picked a different name, like Forsaken or something like that.

What i dont understand is why these talented teams of modders with all the resources and skills they have chose to make works in the universe of 3rd party brands that they dont own. Skilled modding team, makes a Batman/Star Wars/LOTR etc themed game.

Unless they are trying to leech off these popular brands and attract as much attention as they can to their work off them, I dont get why they dont just make new IPs. I think that's the case with these people. They dont want to spend effort and time trying to build up following, they just want a free ride off these popular licenses.

well if someone makes a fan game of an ip they dont own, maybe its because they are dissatisfied with the oficial products, to bring up the mlp example again, the offical games suck so of course the fans would try to make a good game of something they like. dont you sometimes wich there was a good game of a movie you like whose official games suck for example? in the case of descent thoug i do agree its better they make their own thing since the descent games are still available and they are very good

doomgargoyle said:

What i dont understand is why these talented teams of modders with all the resources and skills they have chose to make works in the universe of 3rd party brands that they dont own. Skilled modding team, makes a Batman/Star Wars/LOTR etc themed game.

Unless they are trying to leech off these popular brands and attract as much attention as they can to their work off them, I dont get why they dont just make new IPs. I think that's the case with these people. They dont want to spend effort and time trying to build up following, they just want a free ride off these popular licenses.

I don't think they were going to sell it, obviously, so to "leech" off the following, considering they are the following, doesn't make sense. I could see your point if they were going to sell it, but that wasn't the case. They wanted to remake a game they all apparently much enjoyed. It would seem good business sense, that if you've created a game with loyal fan-base, and they already did allot of great work to remake said game, why not just employ them? You wouldn't have to do any work; you could sit on your ass and pretty much profit off your IP recreated by people that'll probably work for lower payment than current employees.

Flesh420 said:

I don't think they were going to sell it, obviously, so to "leech" off the following, considering they are the following, doesn't make sense. I could see your point if they were going to sell it, but that wasn't the case. They wanted to remake a game they all apparently much enjoyed. It would seem good business sense, that if you've created a game with loyal fan-base, and they already did allot of great work to remake said game, why not just employ them? You wouldn't have to do any work; you could sit on your ass and pretty much profit off your IP recreated by people that'll probably work for lower payment than current employees.

I know they werent going to sell it, they couldnt since it's not theirs. What I meant is that they probably were taking advantage of the popularity of the IP to sell their own talents in modding/game making to potential employers, again using the name of the IP as a way to attract attention. The fact that they used the original game name in their site raises that question. Instead of spending money and time marketing a brand new free game that theyre working on, they just quickly get hits because the game has brand recognition. That said, the IP owners could hire them to make it "official", but probably because of difficult messy legal reasons they don't. Gearbox shutdown that Duke Nukem Reloaded fan project for example. Companies just dont make official games out of fan made efforts.

And this is how competing brands are born.

I'd say that refacing the game, and naming it something other than Descent, is probably the best option. There, they can have a Descent like game, and just rewrite some stuff and create assets or modify existing assets so it looks more original.

Clonehunter said:

I'd say that refacing the game, and naming it something other than Descent, is probably the best option. There, they can have a Descent like game, and just rewrite some stuff and create assets or modify existing assets so it looks more original.

That's what they're doing.

No fucking shit, lol. I was just opinioning and agreeing that it's a good idea.