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Form Letter for Contacting Gaming Websites

Started by oberonqa, February 28, 2010, 11:53:48 PM

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oberonqa

In greater thought about my suggestion about contacting gaming websites and letting them know about the situation, I have come up with the following letter which you can copy and paste when submitting to gaming websites:

BEGIN LETTER
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Earlier today (February 28th), Activision issued a Cease and Desist order against fan developer Phoenix Online Studios, who has been hard at work on The Silver Lining, an unofficial sequel to the venerable King's Quest series.

Visitors to the game's website, located at http://www.tsl-game.com are now greeted with the following letter from the development team:

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To Our Fans:

In 2005, Phoenix Online Studios received a Cease & Desist letter from Vivendi Universal, the owners of the King's Quest IP, in regards to our work on The Silver Lining. We complied with the request, and over the months that followed, we were able to work out a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi that allowed us to continue our work on the game.

We have spent a lot of time recently reworking the material of The Silver Lining into episodic releases, with the first out of a planned five episodes completed, and submitted for review, and had hoped we would be able to bring our game to you, the fans, in the Spring of 2010.

Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and became the property of Activision. After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website.

As before, we must and will comply with this decision, as much as we may wish we could do otherwise.

We cannot say enough how much we appreciate the support we have had over these years from our fans. Without you, we would never have gotten this far. There would be no game to develop, and no one to develop it for. You have been amazing and steadfast, and we will always remember that and appreciate it more than we can say.

Sadly, after eight years of dedicated work and even more dedicated fans, The Silver Lining project is closing down.

What the future holds for us, as individuals or a team, we cannot say. We have an amazing development team, however, filled with talented and hard-working individuals, and we hope the teamwork and rapport we have developed will not go to waste. We hope that when we do know what the future holds for us, our fans will be there to enjoy what we can give them still.

Again, thank you all so much for everything. This has been a long and crazy road, full of more twists than we could have anticipated, but more triumphs and wonderful memories than we could have ever hoped for. And for that, to all of you and to everyone on our team, we will always be grateful.

Thank You,

The Silver Lining Development Team

In compliance with Activision's request, most of our forums are coming down. However, we are keeping a few new, empty forums open so fans can stay in touch with one another and with us. Please visit: http://www.tsl-game.com/f...um/index.php?topic=8394.0

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As many of you will recall, back in 2005, Phoenix Online Studios was issued a Cease and Desist by Vivendi Universal for the development of King's Quest IX. After a lengthy petition and review process, Vivendi Universal granted the developer a limited non-commercial license to develop their game, which was renamed "The Silver Lining".

However, with Activision's recent acquisition of Viviendi Universal's properties, the fate of The Silver Lining came into question yet again. Today that fate appears to be sealed. The Cease and Desist issued by Activision calls for the immediate cease in production of the game as well as taking down all related materials from the game's website. At this time, the game website has been taken down and the bulk of the game's community forums has been taken down by the development team in an attempt to comply with the order (though efforts are being made to go through the forum in greater detail to comply with the order and put back into place any parts of the forum that do not directly pertain to the game).

The Silver Lining began it's development in 2002 and despite many challenges and hurdles, was on track for a summer 2010 release.  A petition is available online at http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/savetsl/ which is petitioning Activision Publishing, Inc. to retract the Cease and Desist order and allow The Silver Lining to finish development and be submitted to Activision for an impartial review to ensure standards in quality and content.
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END LETTER

Just copy and paste this for submission to any gaming website you regularly visit (most websites these days have a "Submit News" or "Submit a Tip" link somewhere on their site).

EDIT:  Edited the letter to include a link and general information about the Save The Silver Lining petition.



(Posted on: February 28, 2010, 10:22:29 PM)


And there is now an article up on Joystiq...

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/28/activision-shuts-down-fan-made-kings-quest-sequel/
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.

Haids1987

#1
I saw another article online earlier.  It just makes it seem more real.  How sad.  :'(

Nice job on the letter, by the way.  I don't really frequesnt any gaming sites, but I'll keep it in mind next time I'm lurking on a gaming forum.
STATUS:
-Drinking water
-Checking the forum. 

Perpetually. ;D
Erica Reed is Katie Hallahan.
Leader of the "I <3 Doon" Fanclub

oberonqa

#2
Site List moved to it's own thread, located at http://www.postudios.com/blog/forum/index.php?topic=8416.0
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.

atec123

 :(


I might be a member of some gaming website.  I might join some sites with TSL articles and advertise our plan.  Once we get it a little more polished.
Official maintainer of TSL in linux via Wine. TSL AppDB page
Maintainer of TSL in OSX via Wine
TSL IRC Chatroom Maintainer
We are the Defenders of Jazz Ballet
People say, when they see us:
Hey, folks! It's the Saviours of Jazz Ballet
Fearless heroes of kick and spin

oberonqa

GameDev has a mention to the C&D and a link to the Joystiq article up on their website

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=563718
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.


oberonqa

Quote from: Santa on March 01, 2010, 01:54:07 PM
Just wanted to mention that the norwegian site Gamer.no made a article aobut it.

http://gamer.no/artikler/48314/activision-stopper-the-silver-lining/

Thanks for the tip there.  If you can read norwegian (I can't... couldn't figure out how to post comments), can you post a comment with a link to the petition? 

Thanks!
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.

Haids1987

This is so depressing.  :(  But at least most people seem to support TSL and not Activision.
STATUS:
-Drinking water
-Checking the forum. 

Perpetually. ;D
Erica Reed is Katie Hallahan.
Leader of the "I <3 Doon" Fanclub

oberonqa

JustAdventure also has an article about the cease and desist. Currently waiting for my account to be activated so I can post a comment with a link to the petition.

http://justadventure.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1267397559/0
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.

dark-daventry

The majority of the internet, so far as I can tell, is on our side here. That's always a good thing.
Founder of the (new) Left Handed Alliance Of Left Handed People (LHALHP)

Gay and proud of it!

Avid Adventure Game fan

crayauchtin

The only people I've seen on Activision's side don't have all the facts so they're clearly not reading the articles, they're just commenting to be morons. :P That's like...three people that I've seen. :P
"If your translation is correct, that was 'May a sleepy hippopotamus lie down on your house keys,' but you're not sure. Unfortunately, your fluency in griffin-speak is too low."

We're roleplaying in the King's Quest world: come join in the fun!

dark-daventry

Quote from: crayauchtin on March 01, 2010, 02:05:57 PM
The only people I've seen on Activision's side don't have all the facts so they're clearly not reading the articles, they're just commenting to be morons. :P That's like...three people that I've seen. :P

Yeah, most everyone else has been on our side. I've read a few that go for activision, but most comments are making fun of the company.
Founder of the (new) Left Handed Alliance Of Left Handed People (LHALHP)

Gay and proud of it!

Avid Adventure Game fan

Santa

Quote from: oberonqa on March 01, 2010, 01:56:55 PM
Quote from: Santa on March 01, 2010, 01:54:07 PM
Just wanted to mention that the norwegian site Gamer.no made a article aobut it.

http://gamer.no/artikler/48314/activision-stopper-the-silver-lining/

Thanks for the tip there.  If you can read norwegian (I can't... couldn't figure out how to post comments), can you post a comment with a link to the petition? 

Thanks!

Already done ;)

mateo360

The telltale forum topic discussing this morphed into how lucasarts use to deal with fan games for some reason.
\  |  /SUN           "For Peace and Justice!"
-(   )-KNIGHT     "A Solider in Blazing Armor!"
/  |  \POWER!    "Solar Knight!"
        BUILD UP! "In the Name of the Sun, I will destroy you!"

oberonqa

#14
Website List moved to first page.
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.

mateo360

I got the letter posted in the forums of Abandonia and Abandonia Reloaded so fans of the original king's quests and there remakes who don't know get the news.
\  |  /SUN           "For Peace and Justice!"
-(   )-KNIGHT     "A Solider in Blazing Armor!"
/  |  \POWER!    "Solar Knight!"
        BUILD UP! "In the Name of the Sun, I will destroy you!"

Haids1987

STATUS:
-Drinking water
-Checking the forum. 

Perpetually. ;D
Erica Reed is Katie Hallahan.
Leader of the "I <3 Doon" Fanclub

oberonqa

Among the many sites I have submitted the letter to... I have also submitted the letter to G4TV.com (specifically, the X-PLAY section), which runs on TV.  I don't have cable or satellite (due to not watching much TV).... but you all might want to keep an eye on the shows X-PLAY and ATTACK OF THE SHOW for mention of this on tv...
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.

dark-daventry

Quote from: oberonqa on March 01, 2010, 02:40:56 PM
Among the many sites I have submitted the letter to... I have also submitted the letter to G4TV.com (specifically, the X-PLAY section), which runs on TV.  I don't have cable or satellite (due to not watching much TV).... but you all might want to keep an eye on the shows X-PLAY and ATTACK OF THE SHOW for mention of this on tv...

I hope they list it there! That'd be great. I would say Attack of the Show is more likely to give us a chance in the spotlight over X-Play, but I wouldn't know for sure. I do like G4TV. It's a great channel, and they have some awesome E3 coverage...
Founder of the (new) Left Handed Alliance Of Left Handed People (LHALHP)

Gay and proud of it!

Avid Adventure Game fan

oberonqa

Yea definitely.  You never know about X-PLAY though.... Adam and Morgan are both definitely gamers... but then again so is Ollivia and the other host of ATTACK OF THE SHOW.... so who knows.

I also found a link to an article over at GameInformer, which is the website portion of GameStop's magazine... so there's a very strong chance it'll be in print at some point.
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.