Chrono Ressurrection Forced to Cease & Desist

Kethinov writes "The Chrono Ressurrection Project (previously mentioned on /. here), an attempted 3d remake of the popular 2d game Chrono Trigger, has been shut down by Squenix in the form of a cease and desist letter. Quoth their website, "it is with our deepest regrets in that we have to announce the closure of the Chrono Resurrection project. Square Enix Co., Ltd recently issued a Cease and Desist letter which will mean the project is closed indefinitely." The site retains two trailers and a number of screenshots."

That was predictable.

[Dark Lord Seth]

Constantly rehashing Squaresoft titles into new titles with only minor and insignificant changes is the only way Square-Enix makes games nowadays.

Can't have your biggest fans steal your business model, hmm?

Asking permission.. but do they answer ?

[88NoSoup4U88]

I wonder if the team asked for permission beforehand ; Most likely not.

Still, a shame that such a project (which seemed to be making quite some progress) gets shut down : Hell, they are not doing it for the profit ; but purely because of being a fan of the (imo fantastic) Chrono Trigger.

On the topic of asking permission ;

About a year ago, I have started porting a semi-2d port of a classis arcade game (Elevator Action) to the HL2 engine.
Knowing that 'getting foxed' is something quite possible these days, I thought beforehand to ask Namco for some sort of permission ... and to this day, have not received -any- replies from Namco :

I am not saying that Namco and their lawyers should be replying to me within a week ; but at least (after sending about 7 e-mails to different adresses) they should let me hear -something- : I almost am sure I -would- hear something (maybe within that one week timespan) if I would go along in making it, and calling it 'Elevator Action'

For now, I am continuing on the development of it ; and am considering to just name it something completely different (no 'elevator' or 'action' in the title) : just in case ; but keeping the exact same gameplay... I might even call the dude Otto ;)

Re:Why not just change the name, and the character

[88NoSoup4U88]

Mwoah ; i don't agree on those points ;

This was a Fan project ; they loved the game, think it would even rock more in 3D : And went along and (almost) did it.

Maybe this project has shown them that they -do- have the capabilities to create alot of assets, and they might want to go on ; in the direction you say.

Respect, on my side, is not lost ; Just because they used a world/story/game , and ported it to their vision :
In that mindset ; -every- sequel of -every- game, would not get as much respect as the 'first' ; and that is not the case (taking Super Mario Bros. as an example)

Re:Why not just change the name, and the character

[Anonymous Coward]

He would not have problems if he had his own story, characters and world and only used Chrono Trigger as the inspiration for the gameplay mechanic.

True.

Then we would have even more respect for what he was trying to achieve.

False.

If there hadn't been the Chrono Trigger connection, who would have cared? It'd just have been Yet Another Unfinished Game Concept; a handful of people would have glanced at it and said "oh, nice lighting", the rest of the world would have ignored it, and they'd have given up on the whole thing when they discovered how much harder it is to produce an entire game than some neat concept shots.

Re:Really, is anyone surprised by this?

[Bloomy]

In America a company or individual is required to defend their copyrights or they risk losing their rights to them.

Nope, trademarks need to be defended by the holder or risk dilution. Copyrights don't need to be defended.

However if you just quietly work on the project, don't publicize it very much, and don't attempt to make money off it, some authors/companies are willing to look the other way since they have plausible deniablity about its existance.

There is nothing stopping them from continuing to work on the project. They should be able to post updates on their progress, but not post pictures or movies that would violate Square / Enix's copyrights. Just say, "we're 20% through the game." As long as they don't distribute what they've done, much to the chagrin of people who would like to see it, and take precautions that it doesn't slip out, they wouldn't need permission. That's fair use.

What true fans would do

[Josiwe]

Look, at the moment, the only way a nostalgic fanboy can play chrono cross is to buy an old copy of the game. That money goes to squarenix. Who would buy an old snes cartridge though, if an awesome updated version was available for free?? What the group should do is send a letter to squenix saying, if we turn over all commercial rights and ownership of the game to you, and only ask for creative credit, can we keep working on this game? You can sell it for 39.99 and it will make a crapload of money, and you will have 0 cost.