[Jeysie]

I find it funny that one would argue moral grounds here. KQIX was chiefly written without Roberta's input or approval. Very late in the procedure, they got her "blessing,"but that blessing was not based on a review of the material. Roberta refused to look at the specifics of the game. Her "blessing" amounted to, "Good luck with your project, go for it!" not "I approve of what you have my characters saying and doing, I approve of the direction you're taking the series I created, and I approve of your representation of this game being the next rightful game in the series I created."

In other words, she did not (or, legally, could not) care overmuch about the future of the KQ series if she gave her blessing, sight unseen, to a fangame.

True, but it's her right to care or not care about her work. Choosing whether or not to review the fangame before saying whether she minds it or not is her choice, and in the end she didn't shut them down. If she had it wouldn't have bothered me, and if the KQIX team ignored her and did it anyway I would take umbrage at them.

Why is it morally wrong for the company that PAID for those characters to assert their ownership, but NOT morally wrong for a company (the KQIX team) that did NOT pay for those characters?

I don't see KQIX as asserting ownership any more than any other team who creates a fangame or fanfiction. If you're going to call the KQIX team on that you need to call every non-original fangame team on that.

BTW: I urged the KQIX team many times, years ago, to consider renaming and recreating the game from a very early point, so as to be more respectful of Roberta (specifically: NOT to rewrite canon)

Isn't that what *every* fangame does, rewrite canon? AGDI's KQ2 remake *completely* rewrote canon. SQ7.org is playing with canon. Every other SQ fangame is rewriting or playing with canon to some degree. Etc. etc. It's essentially electronic fanfiction, and again, if you call one team on it you have to call everyone on it.

To avoid conflict with Vivendi, and to avoid making presumptuous claims about what direction the series should move in and whether or not the game should be represented as being the next game in the series. For this, I was considered hostile to the project. I take no joy in seeing the project quashed, but I think it was easily preventable, and I think hubris got in the way.

I will say I do agree with this part to some extent. I do think the team has been guilty of some hubris. (Which is one reason why I don't post on their forums any more.)

Nevertheless, I think what I'm basically saying here is that, again, to me the whole situation feels inconsistent. If Vivendi is going to shut down one fangame, they really need to shut down all of them, or at least give some concrete criteria of what they do and don't find acceptable and why, so every fan who wants to do a fanwork isn't looking over their shoulder with paranoia.

You do make some good points, but again, they are true of all non-original fangames, so I don't think it's fair to pick and choose which games you condemn regarding them. That's what I'm really arguing about here: equal treatment (or perceived lack thereof).

Peace & Luv, Liz