tain.totalcodex.net

What are the options of the community buying it back?

any lawyers out there be able to tell us some kind of senario?

Like there is a "Buy back Myth Franchise Fund"

and we'll all donate whatever we want to this fund..become share holders of nothing with 1 vote each, and the money sits there for a year at a time. The money only gets spent if the offer is accepted. at the end of each year the money in the fund could go back to those that gave whatever amount - like paypal transaction fees. or it could just sit in there.

we woudlnt have to worry too much about not being able to put it in boxes on store shelvs all over the world if we couldnt find a publisher, because people are very used to paying for a copy of something and downloading it from a website. mail order could be an option to, if people say bought 1 copy out of 100 that were for sale on ebay at all times at a fixed price.

even if this didnt work it would get world wide attention in game mags and on websites...and if it DID work We would all make History.

But silly me i allways think there is hope when im caught in the middle
of a hopeless battle...and lots of times this faith will see me through to victory. other times it will leave me broken and bleeeding on the ground, wondering what happened.

-Renwood

There reason no fund has been set up is because there is no evidence that Tale2 is willing or will ever be willing to sell the franchise. The fact is, it's safer to do nothing, then to sell the franchise for Take2.

Faith is something that a lot of times isnt due to evidence.

take 2 is in the shitters as of late and as somebody stated in a post if they go bankrupt the court or somebody working for them will sell off holdings to repay debts.

As i said if it didnt work, myth would still get some publicity.
NO publicity is Bad publicity.

ducky/tiger told me at some point he offered Blades $7,500 to sell him the rights to PM
and blades didnt take it.

and thats just 1 community member.

Ooga and myself have spent over 7,000 in the last 3 years on development of our myth IV project pitch.

-Renwood

Blades actually answered Tiger with a playmyth sale figure of $75000. The biggest problem of getting Take 2 to do anything with Myth - whether that's making it freeware, selling rights to use the engine to make another game or selling the franchise - is that no-one has any contacts there. The people that we knew from the time of Myth II Worlds and the provision of source code for Myth 3 development are all gone now.

If anyone makes a genuine contact at Take 2 - someone who can actually make decisions and is willing to talk about Myth - then there's hope that maybe something could be worked out.

iron wrote:The people that we knew from the time of Myth II Worlds and the provision of source code for Myth 3 development are all gone now.

That is a bummer.

Do we have any documentation of our communities' permission to be working on the source code (or *any* formal documentation of past proceedings in any form)? The reason I ask is that perhaps it's time I have something drawn up to send to their legal dept. to begin a formal inquiry process... if nothing else, it will dust up some contacts.... and I'd hate to stir up something that would get things shut down.

My knowledge of the documentation is third hand, so please forgive any inaccuracies. Shortly after Myth 3 came out, NDAs were signed by Some Loser and two other guys to work on an unofficial M3 patch. These people joined with the playmyth folks to form Mythdev, but due to the shenanigans of the ppl in charge they all left soon thereafter. Hence the work of producing the M3 patch was done by developers who hadn't signed any NDAs.

The NDAs expired after a year, so they're long out of date by now. Some Loser was quite active in Magma for a while, trying to negotiate with Take 2 for an agreement to make Myth IV, which ultimately came to nothing. Last I heard all his contacts in the company (which were the best anyone's had in the Myth community) had all left.

There's never been any license of any kind for working on Myth 2. The sourcecode came to Blades via falling off the back of Andrew Meggs's truck. Blades didn't want to do anything with it, but didn't mind my starting an effort to get the game running on OSX. I was getting no help from mythdev (Myth 3 was their only interest), so I brought it to Magma where all the Myth 2 patches of any significance have been built.

Initially with the 1.3.2 & 1.4 releases there was some concern over us making these updates without anything legal in place. Those patches got pretty widespread coverage on the 'net though, and nothing was heard from T2 at all. We emailed the sourcecode to the last known contacts there & heard nothing in response.

If contacting their legal department resulted in Magma getting a cease & desist, yes it would kill 1.7. I'd have to say its a pretty low risk though. Mythdev apparently contacted T2 about this at some point & were told that updates were ok, but not to try using the game engine to make a new game. In reality I'd be surprised if anyone at Take 2 knows much anything about Myth at all.

iron wrote:...If contacting their legal department resulted in Magma getting a cease & desist, yes it would kill 1.7. I'd have to say its a pretty low risk though. Mythdev apparently contacted T2 about this at some point & were told that updates were ok, but not to try using the game engine to make a new game. In reality I'd be surprised if anyone at Take 2 knows much anything about Myth at all.

Even so, maybe best to wait till 1.7 is out before contacting their legal department?

As I think about the issue, on a practical level the code is available and modifications are being made and new versions of Myth 2 are being distributed with no interference from Take2. That isn't going to change with any legal acknowledgement/new permission from Take2.

IF Take2 legal is contacted and the people familiar with Myth are gone so they just do a standard legal 'Hey, Myth is the property of Take2 you guys can't modify it or distribute it' corporate intellectual property-type response then we lose the ability to have new versions of Myth, and possibly even to distribute versions that have been modified from the original Bungie code (v1.3.2?).

Are there other factors that weight your decision to contact Take2 legal one way or the other?

The simple fact is Taketwo ISNT the first people you want to talk to anyway. Finding people with more money and a broader vision of how to make and publish great games would be ideal.

A different company wouldnt mind buying the franchise from T2, If they felt they could have new content to publish.

so T2 should be the LAST to be talked to about anything myth related.
Better to ask for forgiveness then beg for permission.

Renwood: Unmidigated Unadulterated Immutable Peachieness

The simple fact is Taketwo ISNT the first people you want to talk to anyway. Finding people with more money and a broader vision of how to make and publish great games would be ideal.

A different company wouldnt mind buying the franchise from T2, If they felt they could have new content to publish.

If your intent is to make a new game or to make money off of this, then this might be an advisable approach.


If your intent is as mine is, which is to get permission to freely distribute the game in its entirety, then contacting T2 is the only course of action and some 3rd party investor is meaningless.

Lastly, if some company WAS convinced to buy it (and without a strong prognosis for recouping their investment, no half-intelligent company will), you can bet whatever money you have left that they are going to want full control over the product.... and if there was a market for it, one might think that the game distribution company that currently holds its rights might have already been working that angle... especially when they are in dire straights

Naw PPE, the take 2 CEO and other higher ups were too busy fixing stock prices and going to court over it to think much about myth franchise at all.
Freely giving away myth would be cool...but it wont really get any new players to join us but a handful.

A game 3rd party company or publisher would be VERY smart to invest in the myth franchise because they could get a title on 3 well know gaming platforms for under $200,000 for the WHOLE thing...engine francise, new features and all new units.

its a great investment.

god ANY title on 360 makes it's huge budget back.

-Ren

Renwood wrote:Naw PPE take 2 CEO and other higher ups were too busy fixing stock prices and going to court over it to think much about myth franchise at all.
Freely giving away myth would be cool...but ti wont really get any new players to join us but a handful.

I disagree. I think it would be an ENORMOUS step.

Hows that DA? none of us has money to advertise it, if it was freeware. And the community for a 10 year old game like this one is allways dwindling away wether you belive it or not.

be cool to be sure to have it for free...but it allmost is anyway..
can find 100000 copies of myth2 sb for about 3-4 bucks each on ebay.

and theres some www.getmyth2.com website or something where they bought an assload of stock from somewhere.

A company with the things needed to promote and publish it and the vision of another myth game or all the myth games in a bundle, could make them some big money with little investment. is the best thing..

-renwood

Renwood wrote:A company with the things needed to promote and publish it and the vision of another myth game or all the myth games in a bundle, could make them some big money with little investment. is the best thing..

-renwood

Too much. Then we would lose the tight link to the community that the developers have now. Open source would be glorious. Anyone could distribute. It would be very very nice.

-DA

DA do you make stuff? i see you on udogs and most people who hang out there seem to.

If so i havent seen any of it yet. would like to check it out!

-Renny poo

Renwood wrote:DA do you make stuff? i see you on udogs and most people who hang out there seem to.

If so i havent seen any of it yet. would like to check it out!

-Renny poo

No, I don't make stuff.

Take 2 would never sell to someone who is going to make myth profitable, because that means they just missed out on making money with something they had. But even that, is absurd. Im quite certain there is no money to be made with myth. Any new company looking for that kind of thing could make a new, better engine with all the bells and whistles and just a similar premise from scratch. No need to mess with Myth's rusty hulk.

Since there is no money to be made, open source would be pretty neat. That lets us keep the game we love while making changes, updates, and improvements.

-DA