Monday, March 18, 2013

V&V court case resolved

As Rogers Cadenhead has reported over at Workbench, the lawsuit over who owns the right to the V&V game has been settled, with the judge declaring the game's creators, Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, do indeed own the rights to the game. Personally, I think this is indeed the best outcome for the game, and I have high hopes that, with the court proceedings now behind them, that Dee and Herman, through their company Monkey House Games, can actually bring back V&V as a viable contender among current superhero RPG's (it will probably never dislodge Mutants & Masterminds as the champ of that particular field, realistically, but there's no reason why it still can't do well for itself in today's market).

As Cadenhead points out, this has ramification for FGU beyond V&V; pretty much all their other games (which were presumably published under a similar contract as the one used for V&V) that they published during the 70's and 80's now can (if I understand it correctly) now be reclaimed by the various authors of said games.  If FGU wants to continue as an active publisher in today's gaming marketplace, they're going to have to look at acquiring new games, and not just coasting by on the glories of the past.

Edit: Scott Bizar of FGU has filed an appeal of the court's ruling, so this will take a little while longer to completely work itself out.

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