LEC Legal vs. ScummVM? 24 Jun, 2002 / Comments: 82
James ?Ender? Brown, Project Leader on ScummVM, received a request from LucasArts Legal Affairs earlier today asking that he close his site by July 1st.
ScummVM, in case you don?t know, allows some of the old LucasArts adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island and Sam and Max Hit the Road to run on a variety of operating systems. For example, you can faithfully play these older products under Windows XP or even different platforms like Sega Dreamcast using ScummVM.
In the e-mail to Ender, LucasArts defended their actions. ?We are grateful when fans take such strong interests in our games,? the letter said. ?In order to protect our intellectual property interests, we must ask you to take down your site as it infringes on LucasArts's intellectual property ownership interests.?<:MORENEWS:>
LucasArts also points out that the SCUMM engine is ?still proprietary to LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC (?LucasArts?) and is not released under general public license as referenced in the FAQ section on your site.?
Ender replied to LucasArts, discussing the very nature of his project. ?ScummVM is NOT the SPU [Script Presentation Utility] engine as used internally by LEC,? Ender said. ?ScummVM is a valid clone of the SPU engine, designed to facilitate the playing of LucasArts adventures on modern machines and operating systems. ScummVM allows the data from LEC adventures to be played on many platforms (Intel, PocketPC, etc) and operating systems (Linux, Windows 2000, etc) which are not supported by your own SPU engine.?
ScummVM, as described by its project leader, is the product of reverse engineering without using any information from LucasArts itself. ?The [reverse engineering] techniques used are generally protected in most states under what is generally known as the 'compatibility' clause,? Ender said.
At this point, Ender has informed LucasArts that he will not be taking down the site. ?We are distributing our own software designed to mimic the functionality of the SPU(tm) engine, which we have licensed under the GPL (General Public License),? he said. ?We are not distributing proprietary LucasArts software itself.?
Most fans would argue that ScummVM has done nothing but support the classic adventure games of LucasArts rather than damage them. However, it is interesting that LucasArts? lawyers took this opportunity to attempt the shutdown of ScummVM, which has existed for almost a year. Speculation has been made that these actions could have ties to the comment LEC President Simon Jeffery recently made to Mixnmojo concerning the update of its older graphic adventures. Mr. Jeffery discussed the ?streaming? delivery of these games over the Internet, which would require that they actually work on Windows 2000 and XP.
We will be sure to keep you posted on these matters, and hopefully a favorable resolution will be reached soon.
LucasArts understand nothing about who they are or how they got there. After 20 years of US buying their games they treat us like this. Its a sad state of affairs that they are so ungrateful.
In any case, LucasArts Legal didn't seem to be bullying when they done this - the letter was one of the most nicely worded I've ever seen :)
But if they CANT come to some kind of arrangement with us, -then- they are bullying. I find it impossible to believe that we won't be able to find middle-ground that makes everyone happy.
We'll rename ScummVM to SoapVM!
Thanks to SCUMMVM, I can play Day of the Tentacle with full sound in modern Windows, after years of complete silence...
LucasArts, you sucks... SCUMMVM rules!!!!
And finally, I DON'T WANT to play on-line shockwave adventures. It is stupid! I want to play them in my hard disk, in my laptop, in my Pocket PC, in my Gameboy Advance, without stupid modems here and there...
Posted by Metallus | Comments: 1
According to a recent post by Mojo reader Shapeshifter, Grim Fandango sucked. As such, we are sorry to say that we are going to have to close down the Grim Network. We apologize to all who incorrectly thought that Grim Fandango was a good game."
News travels fast.
oh hell - once there was darkness but now i can see the light! I CAN SEE IT!
AMEN!
Does that make any sense? Of course this is all theoretical, because we don?t know if LucasArts is even going to update their old games or create Shockwave versions. The major tragedy here is that ScummVM does provide a service of running SCUMM games on many other platforms, which is something I doubt LucasArts will ever do. My brain hurts now.
I wouldn't put it past them.
LEC Legal appear to be (quite frankly) a little stupid. They don't seem to realise that ScummVM is an emulator, not abandonware.
So of course I sent my reply, correcting them... and this morning I get an e-mail from my host warning they have been asked to remove the site! ... really friendly to their fans, arn't they? At least they could have replied with a corrected request, and given us till our 'dead-line' date of the 1st!
At least SourceForge (our host) are nice and friendly, and well use to companies misunderstanding things like this. I've let them know their letter doesn't make any sense, as we are not distributing LECs own internal software, and asked them to ignore it unless the big-bully LEC send one that is correct.
*sigh*
- Ender
Lead ScummVM Poo-Pah.
Tired, presumed sleepy.
I just don't understand why they should ask them to shut down your site when their new classic adventure thingy is going to be gratis. There are two possible reasons...
a) it's not gratis and they don't want to lose money by having fans using your alternative way of classic adventure experience
b)it's gratis and they want to be the only ones doing something good for (future)classic adventure gamers. That'd be really heroic :) "Die! Then we'll be the friendliest company in the Universe. No one can stop us from making everyone happy."
LucasLegal is wrong.
And as we are like a Java VM (virtual amchine), we are a ScummVM. Makes perfect sense, and while I know LEC has a trademark on SPU, I don't believe they have one on SCUMM.
http://www.lucasarts.com/about/milestones.htm
--> 1987
"LucasArts leads the move from parser-driven interfaces to the "point-and-click" interface popular today with its new story engine, SCUMM? (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion?)."
I think most I could say here would just be a repetition of what others already have said.
While I don't think it would be *that* easy for LucasArts to kill off ScummVM; they don't harm *any* copyright law, they just develop a compatible engine completely on their own.
I have been following this project since the very beginning (ok, since it showed up on the web ;)), and all I can say is that these are very nice guys, and the original author helped me getting my ScummVM up and running initially. I really hope these persons won't have any disadvantages or anything due to their hard work on this project.
On the other side... this is the second time I am really sad about LucasArts actions. Yes, *sad* i'm not angry or something, I mean, they are a company, that wants to make some money, and they seem to do fine financially with their re-newed policy of high quality content, but as ridiculous as it may sound, the fans (thats *we*) seem to be suffer from this....
First they left the community with a *very* buggy Jedi Outcast version, that virtually renders fun and competitive gameplay an impossibility (v1.02 and v1.03) and won't spend *ANY* more money on it to let Raven fix up some things (what they already *have* done partially with the v1.03a source-code 8included in their Software Development Kit for Jedi Outcast).
Now they want one of the best, if not the best fan projects out there to be closed.
Sad.
2)DO so.
3)Change the Name and interface
4)Start a new website
5)Never Mention your conection with the old program
6)Never let Lucasarts know
7)When they do find out latter rinse and repeat.
There is something going on we are not being told about....
http://www.lucasarts.com/share/webapps/instantpoll/instantpollresults?category=LEC1&pollId=32744
Hmm.. what could it mean. Mini-games like in Sam and Max or the *complete* games?
And I disagree with your claims that Shockwave "just seems cheap." Flash, mostly yes. Shockwave, no.
Of course, you could also do the old fashion "code" system like the Nintendo version of Maniac Mansion, but that would be annoying. :)
2)I don't think ScummVM would likely harm LucasArts' chances in the market, especially considering that it's still moderately developery.
And I think they fear that 'thanks' to ScummVM, people will buy used PC versions of their games and thus no benefits at all for them on this PocketPC relaunch.
Anyway, even if it's not PocketPC, it will be Windows and maybe Mac OS X. This will still leave *a lot* of current ScummVM users in lack of any SPU platform on their boxes (think of all the Unix (on desktop and PDAs) / Amiga / DreamCast users).
But it's really way too early to see what's going to happen. I hope we don't all jump to conclusions here. I'm going to wait and see what LucasArts is up to before I make any kind of judgement on them...
Is this 'standard procedure'?
Doesnt LEC trust the ScummVM guys to close the project if LEC ask them to?
Quite rude and insulting of LEC to release the hounds (the layers) at first contact with ScummVM.
LEC-legal, Be nice. Please. Im sure ScummVM will close their project and let you guys at LEC create such a program/concept to have only one on the market with support from LEC. Right? *~hug*~
Or have I missed something and is way off?
damn....
I hope LEC will make filter into their program - if there will be one...
I liked the filters. It created a new world from the old world.
I'll miss you SCUMMVM! :)
Even those people who bought the games years ago can't play them anymore and ScummVM was (make that "is") a good way of getting them to run on faster machines.
Lucasarts is being way too paranoid methinks.
Fan games are one thing, but this just doesn't make any sense.
I thought it was perfectly legal to create emulators, and even distribue roms, as long as you didn't do it together, on the same website - you are entitled to a backup of any software you have. So as long as the site isn't saying "Hey, get free LEC games for free!" and "Click here for Monkey Island pr0n with pr0n Gilbert", then it should be okay.
I know lots about law because I've read 2 John Grisham novels. I bet that the LEC lawyers are traffiking drugs all over the place, and involved with the mafia, and have already planted bugs on Endy's phone. So watch out.
hmm i just hate the streaming idea, i hope its explainable by the 'we're re-releasing classics for newer Operating Systems' theory.
Of course I wouldn't want to see this occur. Forget flag burnning... lets all gets with the DMCA burnnin'. :D
Gar. GO ScummVM!
He submitted an Ask LucasArts question last week, asking if they had ever considered helping the team. Exactly seven days later, I get this wonderful e-mail in my inbox. Yay.
In any case, good luck Ender! Sounds like you did some research on the legal side of things. This will be interesting to follow.
Now it's going to be shut down!
Damn LucasArts! >:(
But that was just their first e-mail to me.. let's see what tommorow brings.
- Ender
ScummVM Project Leader