THE CURRENT STATE OF V:TES - November 2015

Damnans wrote:

Managing the project would involve a review and approval process for artwork and content before the Wizards imprint could be added to a product. Unfortunately there was nobody at Wizards who had ever worked on Jyhad/V:TES, which, added to the lack of interest by anyone internally at Wizards to manage the project, led Wizards to inform Onbookshelf that they were definitely not interested in pursuing a V:TES project.

Ouch. This all sounds incredibly frustrating. Sincere thanks go out to everybody who spent time (and especially those continuing to spend time!) working on these negotiations. And thanks as well for the update. It is really appreciated, and it's good for us all to see how much excellent work the IC and other volunteers are putting into the game.

Great box art, by the way!

Ben - This is absolutely not what happened to Up Front. What happened was Valley Games launched the kickstarter when they had contractual debts which they did not settle. They tried to hide their kickstarter money by starting a new company (Radiant), prompting the lawsuit from their creditors. After a prolonged legal battle over whether the two companies were sufficiently separated to not cover the debts of Valley, and after a hold on their kickstarter fund placed by the court for more than a year, the company reached a settlement with its creditor. With the cost of legal challenges and settlements, they could not complete their kickstarter pledges and are currently "looking into it". Shortly after the settlement, and to everyone's surprise, wargamevault put Up Front online.

I'm not sure how this affects VTES, but Wizards sued no one associated with Up Front as far as I know.

BenPeal wrote:

elotar wrote:

...

Fast forward to 2013, when a group called Radiant Games announced they had acquired the rights to Up Front from its creator, Courtney Allen. A Kickstarter was launched and raised $300,000 or so. Wizards saw this and noted that they held the rights to Up Front, not Courtney Allen or Radiant Games. Despite having no real interest in getting Up Front back in print for 20 years, Wizards sued Radiant Games to the point where all of the Kickstarter money was lost and Radiant Games no longer exists.

Radiant was sued by mr Phil Sauer not by Wizard

as a creditor from Valley Games mr Sauer said that VG owners sold to Radiant Games (i.e. themself) UF rights at 0 cost in order to avoid to give back to him his money

a texan court lock all kickstarter money (also from Airborne in your pocket game) until RG and mr Sauer reach an agreement so mr Sauer have his money (or most of them) and RG depleted all resources between legal expense and agreement

you can read all in this topic , it is just 571 pages long

thus said almost every one involved in this mess think that wizard sued if the game was place in production

BenPeal wrote:

elotar wrote:

Wizards then proceeded to negotiate a deal with OneBookShelf to print Up Front for the purpose of protecting their property:

www.wargamevault.com/product/148406/Up-Front-Complete-Game-BUNDLE

This then leads to a weird question, with a course of action I really don't recommend:

If Wizards will sue someone out of existence and then publish a game they previously had no interest in for years, just to protect their ownership of it, then...like...would it work if someone published V:TES in order to provoke the same course of action from Wizards?

It's a really, really stupid idea. Don't do it. But it makes one wonder.

OneBookShelf reprint UF as it was originally produced (rules, cards, artworks) while Valley game planned to rewrite and expand the original game, using new artworks and updating rules
OneBookShelf scan many part of the original game in order to reprint it (and they did a great job by the way)
This is why Wizard could authorize a reprint it even if mr Allen seems to have the rights to produce a new version of it

so in my opinion if someone try to reprint VTES wizard will sue it asap

Count wrote:

Ben - This is absolutely not what happened to Up Front. What happened was Valley Games launched the kickstarter when they had contractual debts which they did not settle. They tried to hide their kickstarter money by starting a new company (Radiant), prompting the lawsuit from their creditors. After a prolonged legal battle over whether the two companies were sufficiently separated to not cover the debts of Valley, and after a hold on their kickstarter fund placed by the court for more than a year, the company reached a settlement with its creditor. With the cost of legal challenges and settlements, they could not complete their kickstarter pledges and are currently "looking into it". Shortly after the settlement, and to everyone's surprise, wargamevault put Up Front online.

I'm not sure how this affects VTES, but Wizards sued no one associated with Up Front as far as I know.

Ah, interesting! Thanks for the much better information about this!

EDIT: Thanks to Stefano "Walt" Calzighetti for your information, as well!

So, Radiant Games (the puppet company) launched a Kickstarter for a game they didn't have the rights to, got sued by previous creditors regarding Valley Games (the main company) not about the rights to Up Front but about previous works, bled out all the money from the Up Front Kickstarter, and then after all the money was gone, Wizards publishes Up Front via OBS (wagamesvault)? As if my head couldn't be spinning enough already...wow...

But in the end, Wizards held the actual rights to publish Up Front, and made a business decision (publishing the game) to protect those rights. As for what this means for V:TES, it means that Wizards does (very eventually) pay attention to its properties and could make similar or stronger moves to protect them.

Interesting update, frustrating re WotC. It sounds to me like your approach has been the right one, i.e. to try to find persons in WotC with an interest in developing the game. If that interest is not there, maybe an alternative approach would be to contact someone whose salary/bonus is directly proportional to the amount of revenue he/she generates for the company. I am not familiar with WIzard's internal organisation, but maybe some senior/commercial person (dunno) for whom the "free money" itself will be enough to take on the project regardless of interest in WoD - especially since, as you say, not a lot of work is required (with the ICs and the community doing it all for free!). Then that person could facilitate the necessary work internally with R&D dept, legal etc.

My only concern is that WotC does not want to let the game be printed because they think that VTES players will eventually turn to Magic if VTES dies, or that reopening VTES will lure some players away/back from Magic, i.e. reprinting will make Wizards lose MtG revenue. Regardless of whether that is an accurate assumption (I dont think it is), it may be WotC's policy on the matter.

anyway, just my 2 cents. Great work, keep it up (and we all owe you a round whenever you come to our city...)