« Naruto bookends | Main | Wii's a bargain »

September 13, 2006

Comments

Pete

A shame for sure, it was looking top, very polished. Hardly surprising, but rather cruel for them to wait this long. Very doubtful they'll work something out for an official release either - that would be BRILLIANT, but I just don't see it happening. Only Sierra have done anything like that with the chaps remaking kings quest, and they didn't have the added problem of another publisher's tech in the mix.

Alice

Yeah. It's pitiful really, and I don't understand why Microsoft would do something so.. well, boring, rather than take an opportunity to forge a relationship with game developers. Modders are gold.

Don't get it.

bob

What's odd isn't that it was shut down, but that it took so long for them to do so.
It's really a corporate reflex to sue anyone who makes use of anything associated with one of your products, they probably didn't give it any thought. If someone *was* thinking about it, they probably thought, "at some point, we may want to make a Halo RTS, we need to clear the way." Perhaps the whole project was looking too professional for them to ignore any longer.

Microsoft won't release the mod- I imagine it would be legally far too messy even if they wanted to. They're far more likely to make a Halo RTS in-house and just rip off whatever worked well in the mod. That's the game industry way.

Pete

I think the general reason they do this is so it doesn't set a legal precedent i.e. in the future Activision releases Halo EXTREME and can go "Ah, but you didn't shut down Halogen did you" when MS sue.

More companies should better support modders though, they are indeed gold. Epic nailed it with Make Something Unreal and Valve seem to buy a new mod team every year or so, shame it's still mostly FPS modders that get most of the support and attention.

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

God. That's just horrible. I can't imagine how the guys working on the mod must be feeling right now.

Leo Petr

I am a bit out of my depth on this, but could then not just rename all the in-game vehicles, remove all references to "Halo" -- say, replace it with Iain M. Banks' "Orbital" because Larry Niven might sue if they use "Ringworld" -- and then release it? Since all their art looks original, I think they'd be able to squeak by if they do that.

g.

I remember Bungie beeing pretty permissible in the past if you wanted to use their "stuff" in a noncommercial setting.
That started with Abuse and Marathon. I wonder what ignited this change of mind.

Pete

Abuse was Crack Dot Com, not Bungie. The other big game Bungie did was Myth.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Recent links