[Mordalles]

I was just thinking about it, and was wondering what people's opinions of remakes are. A lot of older adventure games are remade, especially the sierra ones, and as the originals are still being sold, isn't a remake of one just another form of piracy. I mean, i'm definitely not going to go and buy a sierra game if i can download the remake (which is exactly the same game with newer graphics) for free? you're distrubuting a game, thats still being sold, over the internet, you just added newer graphics.

of course, if you get permission, then no problem.

[Nautilus]

People that usually buy games don't look for them outside the traditional distribution channels (local stores or global stores like Virgin, Fnac, Amazon), so they will never know that a "modern" version is available.

Fan games only interests people that already played the original game.

Piracy sucks, and fan version of oldware games are cool.

[Josho]

Until very recently, the old games hadn't been made available for a long, long time. I'd be willing to be that when the fan remakes started popping up, Sierra wasn't selling the originals.

--Josh

[MdaG]

I consider remakes to be more of a tribute.

[AFGNCAAP]

I think most people by piracy mean distributing a copy of the game (perhaps modified a bit, eg. with the copy protection circumvented). Fan remakes are usually written from scratch, so their creators are not pirates in that sense.

They are, however, using somebody else's intellectual property, which is considered a crime in most parts of the World. Whether the original game is sold or not, is irrelevant.

...at least, legally speaking. Ethically, it's not as clear-cut, and this topic has been done to death on the forums.

[Erwin_Br]

Even legally it isn't entirely clear-cut. Think about the exception of parodies, for example.

--Erwin

[Stain]

I was involved with the Ultima 5-Lazarus remake as a dialogue writer. That is the only Ultima remake that has been completed (after 5 long years).

We had several discussions about the legality of the project as we knew that we could be shut down at any time. We had approached EA (who had bought out Origin Systems) and even Lord British himself. They were 'unofficially' good with it (meaning EA would not put it in writing, but they let the project exist. Lord British publicly said he thought it was great), but there a one major stipulation - no one on the team can make a penny from the project, including 'donations'.

Keep in mind that Ultima Online was operating the whole time, so it is not even like the the franchise was dead.

[Erwin_Br]

Why would you want to make money off of a fan-game?

--Erwin

[Stain]

Originally Posted by Erwin_Br

Why would you want to make money off of a fan-game?

--Erwin

I never said we made money or that we wanted to make money. Obviously we did it because we loved the game and wanted to update a classic.

However, EA made it clear that IF any money was made (or donated to us), the project would be shut down immediately. This seems intuitively obvious, but I figured I would just let people here know since I was actually involved with a major fan project.

Check it out HERE. <--- (cheap plug)

Cheers,
Stain

[Sotaria]

Originally Posted by Erwin_Br

Even legally it isn't entirely clear-cut. Think about the exception of parodies, ...

Or Hollywood rip-offs - think just about every movie made in the past decade.