KingsQuest9/Space Quest 3 - Vivendi boycott
 

As many of you already may know Vivendi (VU Games/Sierra) has shut down the production of Kings Quest nine and Space Quest three remakes, which were both nonprofit sequels/remakes of the original series.

I find this rather appalling the way all of this was done. Yes, Vivendi has the right to do this, but games like KQ9 were in production for five years, and it was two months away before release. Space Quest 3 was in productions for two years before they received their own C&D letter. I can only begin to imagine what the actual development team must feel(Which consisted of hundreds). If only VU games did this years ago to prevent this mass waste of peoples valuable time. But they didn't, because I believe they are heartless and greedy. The original creators of the Kings Quest series: Roberta and Ken Williams even gave the ok for these games to move forward.

VU games did all of this just a few days before the release of their sierra classic game compilations. (Which can be found here.). The ironic thing is, they have pissed off the very community that would buy these games. But after their avaricious and heartless behavior we won't, or I at least hope so.

This is where you people come in. I believe that since you guys are adventure fans, you will do what is right and not purchase any games that Vivendi produces. This whole thing is outrageous, and if we all decide not to buy their games they may feel obligated to rethink their piggish decisions.

If you would like to E-mail VU Games showing your disgust, you can at this address: [email protected]. The more letters they get the better.

Yep, any decent conscious adventure gamer wouldn't buy these re-releases!
(If only because we already played all of these ;) )

And I'm sure these greedy bastards will just ship the games with modern OS free software interpreters made by hobbyists. Without ever having contributed to the projects of course.
Or with shitty hacked up interpreters that don't allow scalers and so on...
And of course you won't get any goodies such as *manuals* (do you remember those, they used to exist a few years ago?) so you will have to search a PDF on the CD for the recipes of KQ3.

So don't buy!

Don't you think that buying these compilations would send out the message that people actually care about the franchises?

Buy the compilations; let VU know that you exist! :)

Are you opposing me?
I will crush you!

And by the way, do you really think these series need additions?
Of course it would be nice, but not nice enough to congratulate Vivendi for their behaviours by saying "yeah yeah, you can be assholes no problem, we still will buy the games. And of course, go on selling old adventure games but don't ever publish a new adventure game!"

I might buy them if they work on XP. I've only played KQ 6 and I thought it was good.

Most fans of the series don't know about the fan-made games.

The people so incredibly angry at the KQ9 fiasco evidently do.

I personally don't.

I'll tell you what, I'll boycott these games if everyone agrees to boycott every Sierra game. So don't buy F.E.A.R., anyone?

Thought that wouldn't work. All you're going to do is tell the publishers that these games don't sell, making them less likely to put out rereleases or create new titles in a similar vein.

Mind you, I equally don't support buying products needlessly. I'm quite happy with the copies I already have, thank you...

Please...boycotting does nothing. If you refuse to buy those collections then its on your head whether or not they ever bother with making new adventure games.

Also you do whatever you want but I'll continue to buy games based on quality not on name brand. I happen to like FEAR so I'll buy it. I happen to like The Sims, so I will buy it. I don't give a flying trout what you think of the publishers behind the games....because guess what? No one cares. As long as the developers get funding and I can get my game off the shelf at ebgames then I am happy.

Then end.

This is really short sighted, or you don't know nothing about the game industry.
Because the problem is EXACTLY that : developers don't get funding for doing adventure games.
If nowadays publishing practices were common 10/15 years ago, you would be missing a lot of good, classic, original games.

We certainly won't remedy that by not buying adventure games :P I only care whether good developers get funding and so I'll continue to buy good games. The publishers all suck, and a move like this could've come from any one of them.

Here's my simple rule.

If the game is good, but it. If the game isn't good, don't (unless it's hilariously bad eg. Big Rigs, Gods and Generals).

The publisher's name doesn't matter. Sure, some generally publish better games than others (compare Ubisoft with EA), but it doesn't ultimately affect my purchasing decision.

I had never even heard of these fangames before. Nor had I heard of the XP-compatible Vivendi Sierra compilations.

Now that your thread has informed me that these compilations exist, I'll be sure to go out and buy them. :devil: Thanks for the heads up! :)

ps: fanbased remakes/sequels of officially licensed products will always run the risk of being shut down. No big deal. If they didn't want to be shut down then maybe they should have utilised their time and effort creating something original.

I do, of course, agree with RLacey.

The Sierra quests, however, are indeed good games :D

Jesus, why waste such a large team of amateur adventure developers on a dreadful project like a fan-game for an age-old adventure? No one had the creativity to actually make something original?

Heh heh. Yeah, team-developed fan games are pretty much just orgies of fan fiction *shudder*

I can understand SQ3, only because Vivendi is re-releasing the collection. So they are giving people an option to obtain SQ3 one way or another. King's Quest IX on the other hand is total bs that it is shut down.

If they weren't rereleasing the collection, then yes, SQ3 too would p*ss me off but they are so I understand.

I can understand people's dislike of fan-games: for the most part, they aren't very good. But KQ9 had the potential to be absolutely brilliant! I've e-mailed Vivendi with a whole bunch o' comments saying that I hate their guts for closing these projects down. And on the subject of whether boycotting "sends the message that adventure games don't sell" and that "they will never make an offical sequel if the games don't sell", do you really think that VU will make a true adventure game like the kind we all know and love? Of course not! We're lible to get something like MCL or MoE.

On the topic of fangames being based on known games or universes, I can understand why amateur developers would want to work on that:

• People who liked the original might be tempted to try out the fangame
• A fangame based on a well-known game is easier to promote
• The universe is already there, so the developers don't "lose time" discussing the workings of their universe, the relationship between the protagonists,... and can start working on the game/story right away. Plus, the whole team usually knows the universe right from the start

Do you really think you'd be interested in playing the Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's mine by Himalaya Studios if you didn't know that the same team also worked on the King's Quest I and II remake?

Of course, AGDI / TierraEntertainment did ask for the permission upfront (I think?), and they have done it for each game on a case by case basis. VUGames didn't tell them "Okay, you can basically rewrite every one of our games and distribute them for free". (Or this is what I gathered from here)

They should show what they've got to Vivendi and see if they'd distribute it for them.

No idea why they shouldn't try that path, or why Vivendi would say no to it.

I think all of us realise what are the common reasons for picking fanfic for your game. Still, it doesn't invalidate what bigjko said - such decision shows a certain lack of creativity.
That's a tricky question, you see. Quite probably my answer is "no", but not just because they merely worked on KQ remakes, but rather because those games were stunningly good - and they would be such regardless if they were called "King's Quest" or "Monarch's Mission".

(That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.) :)