Disney, please sell the rights to Monkey Island back to its creator Ron Gilbert

Re:Disney, please sell the rights to Monkey Island back to i... by jerf on Monday May 14, 2018 @02:57PM (#17068372)

I don't think the law has any place adjudicating canonicity, so I just plain don't consider it a problem. And to the extent that it does, trademarks can do the job just fine.

"It would be like Tim Cain making another Fallout game, even though Bethesda owns the rights to the franchise now."

A very bizarre choice of example, since Fallout is precisely what got made because they couldn't get the rights to make Wasteland 2, so Fallout is already "another Wasteland game"! http://wasteland.rockdud.net/fallout.html

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Disney, please sell the rights to Monkey Island back to i... by logfromblammo on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @10:27AM (#17074121)

I'm not talking about canonicity, but about the copyrights themselves. Right now, copyrights can be entirely divorced from the creator of the work. But the motivation of a corporation to hire someone to create a work for them and that of a creator to get paid for their work are different enough that we shouldn't be treating corporations the same as people in this instance.

The example was intentional. It's why I also mentioned Wasteland. Obsidian and inXile are very close, and Obsidian did work under contract to inXile for Wasteland 2. Those studios are both filled with ex-Interplay/Black Isle people. They all got fired, and the rights went somewhere else.

[ Parent | on HN ]