Microsoft has put the boot in over at HaloGen headquarters, telling them to stop working on their almost-finished, highly polished, three-years-in-development-already Haloesque mod for Command & Conquer: Generals, because it infringes on Bungie's intellectual property rights.
Feh, this is plain cruel. The project was announced three years ago on the Bungie forums. The mod development has been carefully watched by fans and journos alike over the years, and the chaps had really nearly finished after much, much labour.
It's so terribly ungentlemanly.
I can only hope Microsoft has plans to hire the people behind HaloGen and their code, and release it as an official Halo-franchise co-pro with EA. That would be nice and constructive, rather than this display of destructive grottiness. In fact, while they're at it, they should have the Halo characters turn up in The Sims as NPCs. Master Chief made a (sort of) appearance in Dead or Alive, so why not, oh, Counter-Strike too (a bought mod, let us not forget!)? How about tiny Halo units in Advance Wars?
Come on Microsoft, be nurturing of your fans, and playful with your characters. It won't hurt, really it won't.
(Thanks Jim luv!)
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.
Posted by: Pete | September 13, 2006 at 19:22
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.
Posted by: Alice | September 13, 2006 at 21:35
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.
Posted by: bob | September 13, 2006 at 22:34
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.
Posted by: Pete | September 14, 2006 at 10:39
God. That's just horrible. I can't imagine how the guys working on the mod must be feeling right now.
Posted by: Hugh "Nomad" Hancock | September 14, 2006 at 12:33
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.
Posted by: Leo Petr | September 14, 2006 at 15:36
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.
Posted by: g. | September 14, 2006 at 23:39
Abuse was Crack Dot Com, not Bungie. The other big game Bungie did was Myth.
Posted by: Pete | September 15, 2006 at 10:42