How the F did Steam let this slip through? :: 3D Text Adventure General Discussions

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Mr. Lambert Sep 17, 2019 @ 6:12pm

How the F did Steam let this slip through?

There's no way Activision licensed the rights to this guy to make a Zork game. This is just straight up piracy. It's going to get pulled from the Store as soon as someone from Activision or Valve notices it.

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

J03D4D4 Sep 21, 2019 @ 8:09am

It is not Nintendo so... At the same time your points are all valid. It's actually a really bad release and isn't doing the name Zork much respect or justice.

mythmaker Dec 23, 2019 @ 3:50pm

FREAK OUT!!! I'm gunna tell on you!!!! Christ are you 7? Some people. Zork is public domain. You can do whatever you want with it. Remake it. Write a novel about it. Make a movie about it. Not everybody is a copyright zealot. I'm glad to be able to experience a free roam Zork game. If you don't like it - don't play it. Just leave those of us who like this kind of thing alone.

mythmaker Dec 23, 2019 @ 3:52pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVZh4WcdC3s

Mr. Lambert Dec 23, 2019 @ 3:53pm

Originally posted by mythmaker:
FREAK OUT!!! I'm gunna tell on you!!!! Christ are you 7? Some people. Zork is public domain. You can do whatever you want with it. Remake it. Write a novel about it. Make a movie about it. Not everybody is a copyright zealot. I'm glad to be able to experience a free roam Zork game. If you don't like it - don't play it. Just leave those of us who like this kind of thing alone.

Zork is absolutely not public domain. Activistion bought Infocom and holds all of their trademarks.

Shin Megami Taiku has 3D Text Adventure

Feb 15, 2020 @ 7:33pm

Fan projects are not a violation of copyright. It's a radically different style of gameplay from the original text adventure, and the name Zork isn't used anywhere in-game or on the Steam page. Hell, there's even a direct port of Zork[textadventures.co.uk] made in Inform that's arguably more piracy than this is, but that's still up and playable for free. There's no legal case here.

EDIT: Turns out that Inform port is a bizarre mish-mash of the three games, not a direct port of the first one.

Last edited by Shin Megami Taiku; Feb 26, 2023 @ 1:22pm

Aun Egg

Aug 5, 2022 @ 10:34am

It's definitely a legal gray area potentially, but it seems Zork receives similar treatment as Ultima fan projects from EA. As long as this dude doesn't start making the big dogs from selling an infringing project, Activision is likely to leave it alone too. Bigfield 2042 is still on Steam last time I checked, as well as numerous games with "Call of" in the title masquerading as CoD clones. Those would be sent C&Ds well before they go after fan projects.

... and I just realized how old this thread is. Oh well.

Mr. Lambert Aug 5, 2022 @ 12:00pm

It's not a grey area. It couldn't be more black and white. If you make a game based on someone else's IP, you are violating their legal rights, and if they notice it, they are required by IP laws to either sign an agreement with you authorizing it or demanding you take it down. If they don't, they LOSE the IP. IP has to be actively enforced to be maintained. 'Fan projects' have zero exemption from this in any way.

Aun Egg

Aug 5, 2022 @ 12:26pm

Activision also owns the rights to the Ultima IP. If Zork is being handled similarly to Ultima, then fan games operating for free will be left alone.

Trademark/copyright law is infinitely more complex than that and has numerous jurisdictional differences. Many Ultima fan games have been operating with EA/Activision's knowledge. Many of the fan projects would have viable arguments for meeting fair use standards as well.

Given this title is offered for free (at least today it is), is transformative (there were no graphics in the original Zork nor any specific exact depictions, the gameplay mechanics are completely different, etc), and it's market penetration being so insignificant as well as the project being marketed differently as to not really be a competitor to Zork, it would have a potentially winnable case.

The only issue is if this game incorporates all of the text and areas from the original Zork game, which would be a debate mostly over text vs. visuals (this title doesn't actually copy all of the text itself from Zork, does it?)