Thursday, December 05, 2013

HeroQuest 25th Anniversary Kickstarter is Dead

As many of you likely know, the Kickstarter for HeroQuest 25 has been on hold for a while now due to some (surprise, surprise) legal issues. As I was going through my email this evening I get this message from Gamezone:
"Dear Backers

Last Friday we were surprised by the pause placed on our kickstarter Project of HQ25. We wrote a communiqué to you, which was also posted on our site heroquestclassic.com. In our letter we tried to communicate to you in the clearest fashion what was happening and as well to share with you all, our petition to kickstarter to have the project reopened. To do all of this publicly was to us the correct way for you as our backers to be informed of the situation and the most correct and transparent way to communicate with you as well, as our backers you have the right to know what was going on with this project.

We have done what you have ask for, we have waited in silence for KS’ answer. It has arrived. KS would prefer to keep the project on hold and wait for us to come to an agreement with third part.
The KS answer can be seen at this LINK (http://gamezoneminiatures.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b41baedd4e20e61cf1416e3d9&id=006d34cfd1&e=e73f17e326).
KS’ position does not agree with as at all. The situation produced by the pause of the project has been harmful.

We do not feel that our legitimate rights over the Trademark have been protected and above all we do not wish to do business with third part under threats or duress of any sort. As a result we are proceeding to solicit KS to cancel our project on their platform.

Is this the end of HQ25? Of course not! Keep reading!
We accept the all of the respectful critics that has come our way because we learn from these things and if someone thinks differently they are free to express those opinions. What we do not accept is the disinformation y distortions that have been happening during the project's pause on KS in which we have remained silent and waited.

During these past few days our creative design crew has still been working on the development of various components, the same as always, the idea being to not lose any energy with this controversy.
The thirteen on the gallows, as we have fondly started calling the 13 professionals that are implicated in the creation of the project, have as a priority the development of this commemorative game.

We are truly more worried about you, the backers. We want thank you for the messages of support that have been rolling in. The public reaction to the news of a new edition of this classic provided undeniable and sincere joy to many. We will hold onto this as the rout to follow.

After this communiqué is sent out we will proceed to ask KS to cancel the project on their platform. After this is done we will immediately restart and continue the HQ25 project. More info atheroquestclassic.com. Therefore the HQ25 project will return to active status. We will move from victims to survivors and conquer as we go.

We understand that KS has a larger public base than any other crowed funding platform today; we understand that moving the project to another site will mean that out backer support will decrease. However we are ready and willing to continue this campaign in a place that will offer us the correct guaranties for our trademark. We would prefer to raise fewer funds and still move forward with and produce it in time for the 25th anniversary.

We await your support and enthusiasm in this renewed crowed funding campaign.
Again, we would like to thank our backers from the bottom of our hearts, please do not regret supporting us. Let us all together get this back on track and make this dream a reality.

Gamezone Team"

So the Kickstarter is dead and will likely move to a different crowdfunding platform, so while the Kickstarter may be dead, the project will likely live on. However, those pesky Trademark issues aren't likely going to go away so it'll probably remain unlikely that we'll see distribution stateside. This whole process though has left me with the feeling that "there's something rotten in Denmark." While I'll watch HQ25 to see where it ends up, if anywhere, and I do hope that Gamezone can get in going and be able to distribute it in retail outlets...it won't surprise me in the least if they hit yet another dead end. I wish Gamezone all the luck in the world with this, but I'm glad I didn't pony up any cash for it and likely won't unless it hits retail outlets. 

2 comments:

Raül said...

GZ has launched this project again:

http://www.lanzanos.com/proyectos/heroquest-25-aniversario/necesidades/

And the goal has been achieved in less than 24h.

kanegrundar said...

That's great and I with GZ all the best, but I won't be dipping my toe into the pool. I still think that they are likely to run into legal issues. Still, if they can get past this stage, get launched, and be able to distribute the product, I may very well look at getting a copy at a later time.

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