These guys also successfully fought a multi-year legal battle against Rebellion Developments (makers of the Sniper Elite series), who claimed that the use of the word "rebellion" in "Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion" was a violation of their trademark.
Sad to see Rebellion sinking so low. I was a big fan of 2000ad in my youth. In the 90s, the Kingsley brothers - also life long fans - bought the comic and started making games from its IP. It was a dream come true for me. Unfortunately none of the games were anything to shout about, and eventually rebellion moved on to generic ww2 shooters. Then they became legal trolls. I wish they'd just concentrate on making a decent 2000ad IP game. An open-world MegaCity-One would be incredible but they don't have the money for that kind of thing anymore. They should go retro, return to their roots. Make a Hotline Miami style Sinister Dexter shooter. Or a Slaine roguelike. Or a Judge Anderson point and click adventure.
At least the dredd movie was good.
Edit:
Just remembered this story. Back when I was a wannabe mod maker I had grand plans to make a Sinister Dexter total conversion for Max Payne. I didn't want to plow ahead and get sued, so I emailed and asked permission. Jason Kingsley personally emailed back and very politely told me that although it was something they'd love to see, they couldn't give me the all clear because they had something shopping the same lines in the works. It never came to pass unfortunately. Still, it was nice of him to reply. I don't know how they got from there to legal battles against people making a game that had nothing to do with their IP
> If a product continues to do well, you want to continue to support it. That’s just a simple business thing for us. It still makes money, so we still put resources into it.
This has got to be the most honest approach to business there is: basic profit seeking incentive for continuous improvements.
Reminds me of Warcraft 3. The last expansion came out in 2003, and the mod community was still going strong into at least the late 2000s when I was still playing.
The old Command & Conquer series (Tiberian Sun/Red Alert 2, 1999/2000) still have an active mod community. A significant factor is a few dedicated people who reverse-engineer the engine and make C++ patches/additions to it, giving regular modders much more power.
I used to be one of those people reverse-engineering Red Alert 2, and those years were certainly fun and challenging, as well as illuminating in the "this is why you don't <bad coding practice>" sense.
Fun fact: When EA repackaged those old C&C games for The First Decade bundle, they removed the No-CD checks. Most of the games were recompiled to achieve that, but since Red Alert 2 had these engine patches relying on absolute addresses, they went through the trouble of hex-editing the executable to keep the patches working.
And over here in Age of Empires 2 the community is so strong that Microsoft actually rebooted development on the game and keeps adding more expansions after almost 20 years. Wololo!
A friend hit me up yesterday asking if I wanted to play a cool new RPG he found, installed, and the custom game lobby was full within 3 minutes.
Warcraft 3 is alive and well, which makes me incredibly happy.
And I think this ties in with the Mod theme of the title very strongly. I don't _love_ RTS games, I can play them but it's not my biggest hit. But the Warcraft III custom games simply blew me away. As a teenager with a fairly limited game budget I have gotten a ludicrous amount of enjoyment out of the countless hours I've put into Warcraft III.
I'd be surprised if you told me I've played the RTS/classical mode of the game over 30 hours over my life. But if you told me I've played over 4000 hours in custom games I wouldn't even bat an eyelid.
Heck, as I said even nowadays I still reinstall and play a couple of fun maps every now and then.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that modding support is an extremely positive thing, and derivations of your creation can truly breed a life of their own which I can only see as positive for your consumers.
Also reminds me of how Bungie released an update for Halo PC a few years ago to allow multiplayer to continue despite the shutdown of the Gamespy servers. They even included a higher resolution mode(up to 4k!) as part of the patch. Say what you want about Halo or Bungie, but that's an awesome thing to happen for a game that's over a decade old. I have so many great memories playing online multiplayer and making mods while I should have been doing my homework!
The fact that there are still communities around these games kind of goes to show that modern variants of their gameplay can be overvalued. I haven't bought a new game in years because classic titles hold up so well and I still get a ton of enjoyment out of them as an adult with limited time on my hands.
It will be interesting to see what modding will look like in five years. I imagine total conversion mods will no longer be a thing for starters given how easily accessible development tools are now.
With services like patreon becoming really popular the mod authors who are good I imagine will be able to self sustain to a degree finally.
[+] [-] stupidcar|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/455527/page/1/
[+] [-] BEEdwards|9 years ago|reply
That they where forced to considered settling.
How are those even vaguely connected?
The article mentions the whole Scrolls debacle, which similarly hurts my head.
I just don't even...
[+] [-] roryisok|9 years ago|reply
At least the dredd movie was good.
Edit:
Just remembered this story. Back when I was a wannabe mod maker I had grand plans to make a Sinister Dexter total conversion for Max Payne. I didn't want to plow ahead and get sued, so I emailed and asked permission. Jason Kingsley personally emailed back and very politely told me that although it was something they'd love to see, they couldn't give me the all clear because they had something shopping the same lines in the works. It never came to pass unfortunately. Still, it was nice of him to reply. I don't know how they got from there to legal battles against people making a game that had nothing to do with their IP
[+] [-] r00fus|9 years ago|reply
This has got to be the most honest approach to business there is: basic profit seeking incentive for continuous improvements.
[+] [-] arkis22|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pepijndevos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gooserock|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aw3c2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lanius|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DCoder|9 years ago|reply
I used to be one of those people reverse-engineering Red Alert 2, and those years were certainly fun and challenging, as well as illuminating in the "this is why you don't <bad coding practice>" sense.
Fun fact: When EA repackaged those old C&C games for The First Decade bundle, they removed the No-CD checks. Most of the games were recompiled to achieve that, but since Red Alert 2 had these engine patches relying on absolute addresses, they went through the trouble of hex-editing the executable to keep the patches working.
[+] [-] arcticfox|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frinxor|9 years ago|reply
Even Warcraft 2 is still being played - check out https://www.youtube.com/user/war2combat which is truly amazing!
[+] [-] Zyst|9 years ago|reply
Warcraft 3 is alive and well, which makes me incredibly happy.
And I think this ties in with the Mod theme of the title very strongly. I don't _love_ RTS games, I can play them but it's not my biggest hit. But the Warcraft III custom games simply blew me away. As a teenager with a fairly limited game budget I have gotten a ludicrous amount of enjoyment out of the countless hours I've put into Warcraft III.
I'd be surprised if you told me I've played the RTS/classical mode of the game over 30 hours over my life. But if you told me I've played over 4000 hours in custom games I wouldn't even bat an eyelid.
Heck, as I said even nowadays I still reinstall and play a couple of fun maps every now and then.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that modding support is an extremely positive thing, and derivations of your creation can truly breed a life of their own which I can only see as positive for your consumers.
[+] [-] ravenstine|9 years ago|reply
The fact that there are still communities around these games kind of goes to show that modern variants of their gameplay can be overvalued. I haven't bought a new game in years because classic titles hold up so well and I still get a ton of enjoyment out of them as an adult with limited time on my hands.
[+] [-] stavrus|9 years ago|reply
[1]: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20753797075
[+] [-] wazanator|9 years ago|reply
With services like patreon becoming really popular the mod authors who are good I imagine will be able to self sustain to a degree finally.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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