[After a brisk nap]

First of all, I don't understand under what logic this is a "lousy deal" being offered by Vivendi. In fact, I don't believe they are asking for anything that doesn't already belong to them by law.

They own Space Quest, right? And SQ7, as a sequel to previous SQ games, is a derivative work under copyright law.

"Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to
authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. The
owner is generally the author or someone who has obtained rights from
the author."

"As soon as a work is 'fixed', that is, written or recorded
on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all
exclusive rights to the work and any derivative works unless and until
the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires."

Secondly, I think that the maximum-publicity, dare-them-to-shut-us-down strategy used by KQIX amounts to cynical exploitation of fans. It's reminiscent of Bad Brain's attempts to get the rights to S&M by appealing to the community. The idea that a high-profile fan game that was shut down at the last moment would leave everyone with "good memories" I find absurd. Bitter and disappointed, more like it. Deliberately whipping up that amount of drama rightly destroyed any credibility Wolfgang Kierdorf had. For KQIX it seemed to work, but the whole affair still left a bad taste in my mouth. And Vivendi extending the same offer to SQ7 seems to indicate that the whole thing was unnecessary all along.

So I respect the lower-profile approach taken by SQ7, though I have a hard time getting my head around what better outcome or offer the team expected.