You misunderstand. Larian is the company that made the BG3 video game, and they haven’t laid people off.
However it’s a licensed game. Baldur’s Gate and D&D are IPs that are owned by a company called Wizards of Coast. And Wizards is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro is forcing layoffs at Wizards, specifically on the D&D team because it doesn’t print money as efficiently as say, Magic the Gathering does.
The people at Wizards, i.e the people who actually make D&D are no doubt passionate wonderful people. But Hasbro (and probably some of the Wizards management) are awful corporate parasites determined to suck every last penny from their properties.
They don’t give a shit how loved a product is, if it’s not making $100M per year then it’s basically worthless to them and they won’t fund it. So layoffs happen.
Game looks cool, but I always have mixed feelings about articles like this. On the one hand it helps raise awareness about the game to the people who want to play it, but it also helps raise awareness about the game to the people who are going to send the cease-and-desist letter.
I’m pretty sure devs are fully aware of what’s going to happen which is why they avoided putting their names on the project and included the source code.
Hammer was always going to come down since they included game assets in the build - news articles won’t really change much on this matter,
I don't think it's entirely on the thrill of seeing if they can, it's also a passion project from their love of the original. They put it out there so people can enjoy the game in a fresh way, the way the devs want it to be able to be experienced.
Including a trademarked term right in the title is the thing that gets most fan projects. It's a multiplier for takedowns, it can't get any easier for companies than running a simple script that just searches Itch/Gamejolt/Github for terms and then doing a mass takedown of the results. And that will even catch things with 3 downloads.
Sure user-added* or redone assets could help, but just distancing the name would help a lot more. Having 100% new assets won't stop a takedown if you use trademarked terms (see DMCA's Sky), and the DMCA system doesn't really discourage overstepping unless somebody has the willingness/money/time to take it to court.
*=image detection could be a thing as well though, so be careful with screenshots especially with a logo
Of course, I hope my comment didn’t imply otherwise. Unfortunately even a different title and completely original assets (AM2R?) won’t help much with some companies.
Good enough project will catch their eye sooner or later anyway.
I do see your point, but it's out there now. How many thousands of people just grabbed it, or will, because of the article?
Just like PGP, decss, and countless other things, it will be kicking around at the usual places for anyone who wants it for long time, probably well past the point where anyone cares anymore.
Yeah it kills me when I see someone share something like this in the early stages of development though, like great you just ensured this will never see the light of day
The Link’s Awakening remake on Switch is worth your time. I loved the original, and I loved the remake. I hope they continue bringing their old games forward like this (LA, Mario RPG, etc.)
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Aktywne