22yo
So, for the past 8 years I’ve been following an online group called Phoenix Online. These people are fans of an old adventure game series long abandoned by the powers that be called Kings Quest. The game ended with an unsatisfactory cliffhanger and a mediocre excuse for a game called Mask of Eternity. Mediocre? Well, let’s just say they took it in an entirely different direction, with an entirely different character, entirely different looks… and they added a crappy battle system. It was horrible.
Phoenix Online decided then to make their own ending after it was more than apparent that the series had been long abandoned in favor of “more popular” things. Kings Quest 9 began production and was 4 or 5 years into development when it was shut down by Vivendi Universal… the new owners of Sierra works.
As you can imagine, the folks involved (and the fans of the project) were horrified. But did they lie down and take it? Um, NO!
A movement called “Save KQIX” began, and spanned over several months. Petitions were flooded, mass emails were sent, letters were snail-mailed, groups protested. It was beautiful. And while most people believe that these groups never accomplish anything, we did. In fact, a few months into the campaign, Vivendi graciously decided to grant Phoenix Online a fan license to complete their project under a new name: The Silver Lining. Pretty cool huh? Well, that’s just part I of the drama so don’t be too pleased yet.
A short while back, Activision became the new owner of the copyright label… and guess what. >.< Yup, you guessed it! They revoked the license. And the even harsher thing? They not only requested production be halted, they’ve ordered that everything (including the forums for the website) be torn down! Like they want it to seem like the project never existed or something!
Anyway, as you can imagine, the community and myself are all pretty upset about the whole thing. But hey, campaigning worked before, so why not try again, right That’s where this post comes in.
I have a few websites here that I wanted to post for your consideration. If you’re a Kings Quest fan who already knows about this fan project, a gamer in general, or simply a person who is fed up with corporate greedy bastards bullying everyone around them, please consider taking a few minutes of your time to put your names down for these. I’d appreciate it, and Phoenix Online will definitely appreciate it:
http://savetsl.co.cc – This is the website for the main campaign. You’ll find everything you need to know about this campaign here, so this should be your first stop if you wanna help. There’s a form letter already written and ready to send. The more emails this company gets, the better. All you have to do is click a button.
http://tsl-game.com – This is the main page for the project… as you can see, it’s already been stripped down to the bare essentials to keep the community in touch with each other. Join the community if you wanna talk to the members of the campaign directly! They’re cool people and they don’t bite. 
Let’s show Activision who’s boss. This project was not harming them. In fact, this entire act shows me just how low a company will go for an extra dollar. This infuriates me to no end. I have half a mind to mail them a handful of my fan art and fan-fiction I created based on Kings Quest back when I was 14 and ask them if that warrants a C&D letter. Heh…
