Cease and Desist

[Basquiat]

Man that is rough —

What will the Project Vaulderie team work on now? I certainly haven't a clue, but I have not lost faith in Atrblizzard and co. to deliver an acceptable alternative solution to the dilemma afoot. 

We're all firmly behind you (to support you) and your group, Atrblizzard.

[Wesp5]

This does give the impression that since Wesp's patches keep the game popular and boost sales, they don't care to point lawyers about in that case.

This is pretty much true, as without my patch the game won't even run on modern systems and someone at least at Valve knows this. Still as with PV please don't bring up the patch as an example at what they allow, not to wake sleeping dogs with the result that they shut the patch down too.

[Jojobobo]

Why doesn't someone here get in touch with someone like Jim Sterling about this issue? I don't have a twitter account which as far as I can tell is the best way to get in touch with him, I've posted about it on his new website so hopefully it will gather attention. Here's the relevant bit of what I posted:

"I don’t have a twitter account, so I thought I’d use this site to raise an issue that’s bothered me (hopefully you’ll get a forum at some point?). Anyway CCP games, who now hold the rights to the World of Darkness franchise, have just sent a cease and desist letter to people trying to port Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines to the Unity engine. This project was entirely non-profit, and would have checked if people had a legal purchased copy of the game to allow play. The project would not have affected CCP in any way, and yet because of their greed they’ve gone and shat on everyone anyway.

This is of course after they shelved the World of Darkness MMO – which I can appreciate they probably had legitimate financial reasons to do so – but it comes across as very dickish to first let down a fanbase and then punish them for trying to inject new life into the franchise. It’s completely ludicrous."

If this issue gains a huge amount of publicity it may make CCP change their behaviour, or it would at least expose that crappy attitude. It's really the kind of thing he should lap up, being a champion of the consumer in the video games industry.

[Wesp5]

This project was entirely non-profit, and would have checked if people had a legal purchased copy of the game to allow play.

Just out of interest, how would PV have checked that without giving people an easy way to circumvent it? Registry checks or file checks wouldn't work. Only re-using all sound files or something similar large in size would have made any sense...

[NemaN]

Hi, everybody.

I must say that it's clear, at least for me, that CCP is just trying to earn money
through the license they've given to Onyx Path and By Night Studios to make products
for the tabletop game and through the PC games that already exist (they don't need to spend
their manpower and resources on those to get money) and that's their only concern
about the World of Darkness intellectual property. Remember that one of first things they said,
after the cancellation, it was they know the IP is very valuable.

That's why they don't say anything about the unofficial patch, but they go after a project,
which attempted to reimagine Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
Even if Project Vaulderie would have tried to add that option to let you play
only if you had already bought the game, it was a different product,
something competing with the original game and if there was people willing to make mods,
they weren't going to do it for the original game, that's why they didn't want it to exist.

I'm going to give CCP the benefit of the doubt, just a little, even though, I'll say,
don't expect anything from them, not if it's related about World of Darkness.

I think a better campaign would be to tell them "sell the property, please!".
Right now, it's like it was a hostage and after they got the money they needed,
they will release it or in the worst case scenario, they'll keep exploiting it after that.

[guenthar]

Since this is a port of Bloodlines to a new engine and not a new game being made CCP has no legal ground to stop Project Vaulderie to be made.  If Project Vaulderie was distributing the original assets then it would be possible for the owner of those assets to go after them but CCP can only stop a new game from being made.

[Isolated]

My sister was working on this project. How incredibly sad. We love the game so much and she is the one that got me playing VtM.

[dev]

This project was entirely non-profit, and would have checked if people had a legal purchased copy of the game to allow play.

Just out of interest, how would PV have checked that without giving people an easy way to circumvent it? Registry checks or file checks wouldn't work. Only re-using all sound files or something similar large in size would have made any sense...

The only way is to assume good will. Those who want to pirate will pirate anyway.
But I don't think that CCP cares about money much, a few thousands sales won't even pay for person to prepare/send the letter. This is IP/trademark question.

Btw, does someone from project tried to contact popular game sites? I think I saw links to a few articles, so there is still interest in the VtM:B game.

[erikmalkavian]

The unofficial Source SDK is working fine, the library and Hallowbrook maps show this.....

What a d*ck move Wesp5!! I can't believe that choose to thump your chest about the UP and bash Project Vaulderie AMAZING work!!  :(

Modding using Source is a ROYAL Pain in the ass!!! I've tried and comparing Half-Life 2 to Vampire the Masquerade:bloodline engine is not real considering the amount of SUPPORT HL2 gets from Valve!!

Having read about atrblizzard efforts to get code from Valve over the years and my own efforts in writing Valve for code in order to export assets, no WONDER  no wants to mod on this broken freakin' game engine!!

Your comment made me REALLY angry and has NOTHING to do with what CCP did in shutting down Project Vaulderie!!

[erikmalkavian]

Hello Kines and Kindreds, we have a rather sad news to give to you.

We've received a cease and desist e-mail from CCP a while ago on the behalf of the team to cease activity as it's infringing their IP and copyright trademarks. I won't go into too many details here as it's explained in this post.

I'd like to thank everyone for their throughout support, Signothorn and Planet Vampire for hosting the forums while we were migrating to a newer host, and the Vaulderie Team for their countless contribution.

I don't know what else to say, I'm dazzled upon their decision but I suppose we all must move on at some point.

Regards,
Arthur

Makes me really sad, you did SUCH great work and I was REALLY looking forward to this Arthur.  THANK YOU for all of your hard work along with the
Project Vaulderie team.

[dbs]

Thanks for shitting on the fanbase again CCP, very much appreciated.

[Javokis]

The unofficial Source SDK is working fine, the library and Hallowbrook maps show this.....

What a d*ck move Wesp5!! I can't believe that choose to thump your chest about the UP and bash Project Vaulderie AMAZING work!!  :(

Modding using Source is a ROYAL Pain in the ass!!! I've tried and comparing Half-Life 2 to Vampire the Masquerade:bloodline engine is not real considering the amount of SUPPORT HL2 gets from Valve!!

Having read about atrblizzard efforts to get code from Valve over the years and my own efforts in writing Valve for code in order to export assets, no WONDER  no wants to mod on this broken freakin' game engine!!

Your comment made me REALLY angry and has NOTHING to do with what CCP did in shutting down Project Vaulderie!!

Take a breather, mate. Wesp5 was just pointing out that we have options - as old as they may be. CCP can't shut down any white-wolf content being made for the original Bloodlines game because it is already licensed. Same is true with Redemption. It's a hard lesson. Though a considerable amount of work was done on building the game up into the unity engine, this really shows how much of that work will be done in vain as opposed to trying to work with the existing games.

[Wesp5]

Your comment made me REALLY angry and has NOTHING to do with what CCP did in shutting down Project Vaulderie!!

Sorry, I was only reminding people that not everything relies on Project Vaulderie. In fact I would have bet that once it would have been finished, regardless of how modding friendly the result would have been, there wouldn't have been more mods or new levels. Because face it or not, the Bloodlines community has created very little compared to the HL2 community which has to use the same buggy Source engine tools for years with no better Valve support, except for constantly messing up modding while supporting Linux or other major plans of theirs.

[IanW]

If I may...

https://www.facebook.com/eveonline

Odds are the EVE community management team has nothing to do with this. Your efforts are better spent elsewhere.

https://www.facebook.com/whitewolfpublishing

Can guarantee CCP will never see anything you post to the White Wolf FB page. While the page is owned by CCP, day-to-day operations are managed by the licensees: Onyx Path Publishing (specifically, me), By Night Studios, and our partner at DriveThruRPG.

We're not able to respond to any CCP-related queries because none of us work for them. We've been spending a lot of time trying to foster a positive environment on that page, and sending people there to complain is undoing that.

Please consider removing the WW page from your list of "targets."

Thank you.

[Javokis]

Okay. We took those links off of the front page as that makes sense in the long haul. Has anyone gone over to whitewolf fb page? Seems that most people are actually focusing on the ccp fb page so that's a relief.