Activision Reclaims King's Quest Rights From Telltale

[StewShearerOld]

Activision Reclaims King's Quest Rights From Telltale

Telltale's reboot of the classic adventure franchise dissolves as Activision reclaims the game's rights.

King's Quest is one of the oldest and most revered adventure franchises in gaming, spanning eight titles released across fourteen years. In 2011, Telltale Games <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107866-Walking-Dead-Fables-and-Kings-Quest-Receiving-New-Life>revealed that it had purchased the rights to the franchise from Activision, and intended to revive it with a reboot of the series. This announcement was followed by a whole lot of not much happening. Whatever ambitions Telltale had for King's Quest never seemed to materialize, and it now seems they never will. After two years of inactivity, the rights for King's Quest have been returned to Activision.

"While we deeply love King's Quest here at Telltale, we can confirm that we are no longer working on the franchise," said Steve Allison, Senior VP of Publishing at Telltale Games. "There was a time last year that we investigated partnering with third party developers to produce the game as a partnership but decided against outsourcing. We are not privy to what plans Activision has for the franchise, if any." The potential partner in question was Paul Trowe and Replay Games. Trowe, who successfully <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117075-Leisure-Suit-Larry-Kickstarter-Has-a-Happy-Ending>Kickstarted a remake of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards in 2012, had spoken to Telltale about working with them on a new King's Quest.

"[Telltale] had it, and we were going to license it from them to make the remakes," said Trowe. Despite these talks, Telltale opted against outsourcing, a move that current Activision now seems to be mimicking. "I talked to the guys at Activision and they were like, 'No, we're pulling it because we're going to do it ourselves.'" Neither Trowe or Telltale know exactly what Activision might do with King's Quest going forward.

According to Trowe, the reason behind Telltale's lack of progress with King's Quest stems from not having enough resources due to its development of projects. With its work on The Walking Dead and <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122961-Telltale-Games-The-Wolf-Among-Us-is-a-Fables-Prequel>the launch of Fables: The Wolf Among Us on the horizon, the developer was simply spread too thin.

Source: Digital Trends




Permalink

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

DAMMIT!

Well at least I can't wait for King's Quest 11: Medieval Warfare Ops 3(!)

 

[fix-the-spade]

Oh well, back to Sam & Max & Zombies!

I want a Walking Dead crossover with Sam and Max, do it Telltale, do it now...

 

[Triaed]

No! NOOOOOO!

Bring Graham back!

 

[Atmos Duality]

So, a few years back: Fans create a Kings Quest game with the good grace of Sierra. Just as it approaches completion (after Sierra's demise) Activision pulls the plug.
Then Telltale buys the rights, does nothing with it, and King's Quest goes right back to Activision again.

It's like this franchise is cursed; either that or the inmates are running the prison.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Oh, come on. The games were dreadful. They only get remembered fondly because they were the first games with graphics, but they were terribly made even by standards of adventure games.

Throw the pie at the yeti!

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Judging by hardly anything being done with the IP and being snatched back by Activision means nothing of value was lost.

 

[XMark]

It appears that the license to make a King's Quest game is similar to the games themselves - it's easy to accidentally get into a state where you can't complete it.

 

[Chemical Alia]

Oh, come on. The games were dreadful. They only get remembered fondly because they were the first games with graphics, but they were terribly made even by standards of adventure games.

Throw the pie at the yeti!

The only one I played was King's Quest VII, and it's still one of my all time favorite games.

And this is sad. I had a feeling the game fell out of production by now, since it's been a few years since any news was posted about it.

 

[LordLundar]

At this point I think the people at both Telltale and Activision are idiots. LSL: Reloaded is looking great so far and if they weren't going to do it themselves, then they should have outsourced it to Replay who could easily handle it.

Capthca: A petco ad. I put in "meh" for the response. This isn't bot-security people! Get a proper system.

 

[Durrsly]

The only one I played was King's Quest VII, and it's still one of my all time favorite games.

And this is sad. I had a feeling the game fell out of production by now, since it's been a few years since any news was posted about it.

I think you would like the ones not made by the creators of the Zelda CD-i games.

 

[Chemical Alia]

The world just isn't the same when I'm not Valanice.

 

[JEBWrench]

Thank goodness. King's Quest deserves to not exist after its stint as an action RPG.

The first six were pretty good though.

 

[Bostur]

Oh, come on. The games were dreadful. They only get remembered fondly because they were the first games with graphics, but they were terribly made even by standards of adventure games.

Throw the pie at the yeti!

Thats my memory of the Kings Quest series as well. Maybe the later ones were better but the early Kings Quest games felt like an odd mix of fairy tale material, with a lousy text parser.

Some of the other Sierra adventures had some more interesting narratives, even though they seemed technically inferior to other adventure games.

It would be an odd franchise to reboot.

 

[likalaruku]

Oh...Well show's how well I've been paying attention...I thought AGD Interactive had the rights....& that Activision went belly-up years ago.

Oh well, we didn't need remakes of remakes. The AGD remakes are great, & free.

 

[spartandude]

Now im going claim complete ignorance when it comes to this IP

however telltale games has proven it has alot of talent where as Activision... well not so much (atleast in my opinion) so them getting rights rather than Telltale is a bad thing in my books

 

[Riobux]

"We're going to do it ourselves, AND PRINT LOOAAADDSSAAAA MONEH!".

On a more serious note, Activision probably reclaimed it because of the amount of success Telltale is currently having. Although I'm not sure if they've been taking the advise they should have been taking from companies like Telltale Games and Valve, that consumers really appreciate companies they view as being human rather than a big business out to exploit you until you have to sell the house due to severe poverty.

 

[Durrsly]

& that Activision went belly-up years ago.

Who did you think was publishing Call Of Duty every year?

 

[LordLundar]

& that Activision went belly-up years ago.

Who did you think was publishing Call Of Duty every year?

Activision Blizzard, which was the result of Vivendi Universal buying out Activision to stop the otherwise inevitable Filing for Chapter 11.