Back in April of 2012 the Kickstarter for Police Warfare was cancelled with no explanation. Since then Elastic Games has been quiet about the progress of the game. Yesterday they broke the silence by posting a new screenshot of an FBI agent to their Facebook page. Unfortunately, no additional details or information were released.
Greg Micek writes: "Does this mean James is going to run off with $376k (cad)? No, not at all. In fact, Last Year already has something that James’ previous games didn’t; funding. However, it does mean that by funding Last Year backers are entitled to better communication from James than what he’s delivered in the past. Simply disappearing like he did with Police Warfare and Outrise is not an option."
Good on the author for doing some research. This dev makes me feel very very uneasy.
Hope they sort out the issues because I love everything I have seen and heard about this game
Gaming Blend - "With the breakout success of Tim Schafer's Kickstarter project for his studio Double Fine -- they made more than $3 million -- as well as Wasteland 2 nearly breaking the $3 billion barrier, countless developers have utilized the site to fund their projects. One such studio was Elastic Games with Police Warfare, originally a pitch as a future Call of Duty title. However, the studio has decided to cancel the project on Kickstarter prematurely."
Wouldn't be too surprised to see these dudes @E3 on stage with Activision or EA...
Man I'm almost willing to bet this will be next year's Call of Duty....Call of Duty: Police Warfare.
Activision is accepting bets, too. Bets start at $1,000,000,000. Kotick don't want no scrubs.
I have NO DOUBTS that they will NOT be with Activision. You don't reward no-name indie developers for hijacking your name and IP to promote something....especially not with a contract. They could just as easily give rights to develop a 'Cops of Duty' game to ANYONE of their choosing.
My guess is that Activision's lawyers gave them a ring. And they have to start over somehow without using Call of Duty and Activision's names to promote it, as they did in the concept video.
But then, their laywers could probably just as well have barked them away from the project entirely if they wanted to. So perhaps not.
All I know is that it makes no sense for Activision to make friendly with some guys that got a moderate amount of attention with a kickstarter and a youtube video. They could get 100x the amount of attention in a week.
You do know that they only used Call of Duty in that mock trailer they made right? The name of the game when they actually started working on it was Police Warfare. They aren't using any CoD or Activision to promote it.
@NuclearWinter
The concept video that got them all of their attention by putting "Call of Duty" in the title and starting off by making it look like an Activision COD project?
Aware, thanks.
I agree with SilentNegotiator to a point. I wouldn't be surprised if they saw a C&D order from Activision and bailed, but I'd go even further with this:
If Bethesda can bully Mojang about the use of the word "Scrolls," Activision could easily bully Elastic about the use of the word "Warfare" with a descriptor proceeding it - they wouldn't even need the stuff in the concept video, it would just be a bit more ammunition for them. Now, it's a dumb lawsuit, but what's the difference between a small company and a big company in a dumb lawsuit? Money, which equals lasting power in court.
Would an infringement lawsuit over "Warfare" alone pass in court? Of course not! Would Elastic wind up broke due to litigation fees, only to settle with Activision behind closed doors over an unfair lawsuit? Yup. I'm guessing they had to can the Kickstarter project because the funds that were already raised used the "intellectual property" value of Activision's franchise, so if they just now changed the name, nope, it wouldn't work. They probably backed out at the right time, without even having to disclose that they were bullied.
They may, however, completely restart with a new name. Or Activision picked them up, an announcement comes tomorrow, and I look like I've got a tinfoil hat on ;)
IF that did happen I would request the judge delay the case until after Activision is done fighting the original IW and EA over the use of Modern Warfare.
IF IW wins that, thats good standing ground. Also study and remember all the terms about how you can't copyright general words such as Warfare and how its police, not soldiers, thus two entities and use that as well. If Activisions only attack is the video, well then shouldn't Activision be attacking every video game website that has ever covered their games? Something for the judge to think about. Activision will go in thinking "we will just burn them out over time" so they need to go in fighting.
Plus even if it were the case, why wouldn't they use some of the money to fiend off Activision? Doing so would be great press for them, especially since a good majority of gamers don't like how Activision does that.
More or less, they got picked up by a publisher.
Dont worry man, they have probably been offered a contract with a big publisher
i meant a publisher offered a contract lol but if police warfare gets made no problem
"as well as Wasteland 2 nearly breaking the $3 billion barrier"
3 Billion Dollars? That's a huge budget, can't wait to see what they'll achieve with it... /s
You didn't hear? KickStarter entered the billion-dollar club...they're rocking $100 bill toilet paper rolls now.
Replies(1)
