This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK, bringing you original reporting, game culture and humour from the British isles.
A fan-made recreation of GoldenEye 007 has been forced to swiftly rebrand after a legal challenge from the IP holder. In a post this morning, the creators of GoldenEye 25, an attempt to recreate the classic FPS in Unreal Engine 4 in time for its 25th anniversary in 2022, said that they had been asked to cease development.
The team’s statement says that the IP holder (MGM/Danjaq) had issued the request, and that it would be complying. Legal action “was always in the back of our heads as a possibility but we’ve tried out best to keep going.” The Twitter account pertaining to the account has since been deleted.
Not to be held back by anything as minor as the threat of legal action, however, the team says it’s going to continue its work, which it started back in 2018; “we cannot do a Bond game but we can still do a great game with all the beloved aspects of our favourite 90’s action shooter.”
With that in mind, it directs fans and followers to its new project – dubbed Project Ianus – where it’s sharing the few tweaks it’s making to attempt to dodge around the copyright. I hope things work out for them – this is yet another example of the ways in which well-meaning fans can get stymied by the lawyers, but a quick pivot to something original means all that work is less likely to be for nothing.
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