This is awful.<p>But it’s also why many “old media” producers and companies in the entertainment and music industry have careful policies around refusing to receive or acknowledge ideas and content from outside the organization.<p>It’s much harder for some fan-writer to pursue spurious legal credit for some plot idea or script content when you maintain an official policy to bin unsolicited submissions and to never acknowledge work shared in public.<p>That’s tricky for “new media” companies since consumers now expect direct engagement with publishers, especially for “indie” artists, but the old system was designed to guard against stuff like this.
My perspective: the fan is not "going rogue".<p>This story is <i>copyright itself</i> brought to its objective conclusion.<p>Everything here, the petty IP ownership claim, the expectation to have that ownership literally applied, the reactionary griefing, etc. is all <i>baked in</i> to what copyright is at its very foundations. This person is simply playing out the function of copyright as an ideology in their interactions with the game company and its business presence.<p>They feel they have the right to monopolize the product of their intellectual work, because copyright says so. They feel they can interrupt the sales of the game because copyright says so.<p>And most important, they <i>feel</i> that they <i>should</i> do these things, because the very existence of copyright, and it's foundational social purpose, tell them it's in their best interest, and their "best interest" is tantamount.<p>This isn't just a story about copyright, it's copyright itself told as a story, just with real people as subjects.<p>So let's stop pretending. This is ugly, frivolous, unhelpful, and damaging. <i>This</i> is copyright law. This is an exposition of the social malware that copyright is, was, and ever will be.
It sounds the fan has no basis for their claim, but due to their background they are able to craft professional claims. I guess the lesson is always expect someone try to screw you via legal pathway (if you read about history of any field this seems to be a quite recurring pattern - if you have a business, you better lawyer up sooner than later).
It baffles me that there are no legal repercussions for abuse of DMCA / IP / copyright instruments.<p>People who do this without grounds should be punished/fines for abusing the system proportionate to what they claim.
I don't think these developers have much of a grip on reality. They stated that Valve could suffer financial harm if the game stays off Steam. I don't think they realize how much money Valve makes.
I'm curious what the legal precedent on this. If intellectual property, concepts, lore, can be protected, does this person have a claim here even though they didn't write the code? Is there a statutory norm for percentages in cases like these?<p>This has to be terrible for small dev shops to face, I'd imagine enough litigating and good projects just fold up shop unable to afford their own defense cost.