«

[mateo360]

Earlier today (February 28th), Activision issued a Cease and Desist order against fan developer Phoenix Online Studios, who has been hard at work on The Silver Lining, an unofficial sequel to the venerable King's Quest series.

Visitors to the game's website, located at http://www.tsl-game.com are now greeted with the following letter from the development team:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 have developed will not 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 have anticipated, but more triumphs and wonderful memories than we could have 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: http://www.tsl-game.com/f...um/index.php?topic=8394.0

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As many of you will recall, back in 2005, Phoenix Online Studios was issued a Cease and Desist by Vivendi Universal for the development of King's Quest IX. After a lengthy petition and review process, Vivendi Universal granted the developer a limited non-commercial license to develop their game, which was renamed "The Silver Lining".

However, with Activision's recent acquisition of Viviendi Universal's properties, the fate of The Silver Lining came into question yet again. Today that fate appears to be sealed. The Cease and Desist issued by Activision calls for the immediate cease in production of the game as well as taking down all related materials from the game's website. At this time, the game website has been taken down and the bulk of the game's community forums has been taken down by the development team in an attempt to comply with the order (though efforts are being made to go through the forum in greater detail to comply with the order and put back into place any parts of the forum that do not directly pertain to the game).

The Silver Lining began it's development in 2002 and despite many challenges and hurdles, was on track for a summer 2010 release. A petition is available online at http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/savetsl/ which is petitioning Activision Publishing, Inc. to retract the Cease and Desist order and allow The Silver Lining to finish development and be submitted to Activision for an impartial review to ensure standards in quality and content.

[verek_22]

Well, this sucks. I remember when Vivendi gave them to green light and let them keep making it, I was quite pleased, and now Activision is shutting it all down?

I signed the petition, but I doubt it'll do any good. Activision are god-damned assholes.

[Lulu_Jane]

I've been following this project for years, it's such a shame it came to an end this way. Especially seeing as the previous IP holders granted them use.

Boo to you Activision.

[Panthro]

I hope Infamous Adventures can release their SQ2 remake quickly then, since it sounds like Activision are on the warpath.

Anyone got any news from them or the Magic Mirror (KQ4) people?

[Lulu_Jane]

Nothing from Magic Mirror since August last year. But that's not unusual

[_r.u.s.s.]

let's all send hate mail
here are some contacts http://www.activision-press.eu/contact/

i already sent a few lines of love to some of the addresses

[TheChosen]

"Hey! You cant do a free fan-game based on our games! Disassemble that immediately!"

Yeah, its practically stealing some base ideas, but isnt copying a form of flattery?

I do have to question, however, that why they took so long. Eight years? Thats a really, really long time for a fan game.

[Maxor127]

The Sierra licenses were up for grabs during that sale. Ken Williams almost bought them back up but decided against it since he isn't interested in games anymore. It will be dumb if they just throw away years of work because of a letter. What they should do is quietly continue working on it, then release it anonymously like AGDI used to do. And if Activision is dumb enough to pursue legal action, then let them. They'll just generate bad press and get nothing out of it. I'll never understand why companies cry about fan-made projects, whether they're games or stories or anything. Boohoo at getting free press and having fans interested in a forgotten IP!

They should be particularly untouchable since if I understand correctly, it's an unofficial sequel and not a remake. It should be treated as fan fiction.

[rabadi]

Again???

I signed the petition the first time around (Vivendi) and I surely will sign a petition again this time!

EDIT: Can we confirm that http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/savetsl/ is the one and only petition? If there is more than one petition please let us know.

[verek_22]

Originally Posted by TheChosen

I do have to question, however, that why they took so long. Eight years? Thats a really, really long time for a fan game.

It was a big project. Full 3D graphics and voice-acting, I think, if the trailer is to be believed. Stuff like that would take time and money, which is apparently going to waste now.