Hi Tom.
You are right, coorporations these days just think they can push people
around and exact money, despite whether it is reasonable or not. For
instance, some cinemas have started disallowing people from taking their own
sweets and drinks in, despite the fact that the cinema charges about three
times the price you'd pay on a highstreet. The result? people simply put
stuff in their bags, and in britain at least nobody has had the gaul to try
and search patrons for food not perchiced on the premises (there would be a
real! legal stink about that one), indeed most of my local cinemas don't
even try anymore even if you do walk in bltantly carrying a bottle of coke
or a bag of popcorn from the local supermarkit.
certainly, as you said yourself, a free game is like a fanfic, so there is
no arguement there, indeed various retro remakes exist of games like
starwars, doctor who etc, (and of course plenty of freeware remakes of
commercial games using original graphics), not to mention youtube vids and
the like.
Even with paying for a game, I still think there is a chance since A, Phil
has managed fine with sarah which is a commercial harry potter game, and B,
it's not as if warner brothers, paramount etc create a hole bunch of
accessible games. They cannot claime that an audio game is taking money away
from them, since it's not as if they are producing anything even in the same
genre.
while i know you got a cease and desist letter over monti, my brother, who
is a solicitor, frequently says such letters are basically sent by
solicitors to scare people into compliance, even when there is no case.
For example, we once got a letter from the solicitor of the garrage at the
back of my parents house saying "your fense is on our property, move it!),
which was complete rubbish since we have the original deeds, they were just
trying it on.
while I can appreciate you not wanting to pay court costs etc, I do wonder
how far that actually would've gone if you had! fought the case, and I think
the same could apply to starwars, startrek etc.After all can you imagine the
headlines?
"Warner brothers leaves blind gamers in the dark!"
Myself, I'd say on a free game you've got every chance, and even if you did!
want to make the game commercial, your likely okay.
indeed, one way around this might be to simply make the game free and accept
donations as developers like Dennis and Aprone do for their games.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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