Some of you may remember that a couple of days ago the indie remake of the fan favourite Streets of Rage was finally completed after nearly a decade of work. Well it seems it also caught Sega’s attention as they have contacted the team who made it and have made them take it down.
The game (which didn’t use any of Sega’s code and was free to play) was only up for a couple of day’s before Sega intervened. Seems like you fans better keep onto your exe’s for now, since it looks like this fan remake isn’t going to come back any-time soon. No word on anything official from either sides here, just that Sega had contacted the team and now the links to the file are gone. You know, Sega I love you but this is really shitty. Hopefully something can be worked out, but for now it seems the game is not available to play, for now.
[Source: Sega Bits]
Soooo bogus. They didn’t even use Sega’s code? I guess they should have used a different name for the remake. I hope it works out.
Screw you for doing this, Sega. They put a lot of work into this and aren’t even charging a DIME for it (they know it’s not their product). Maybe if you honored one of your most beloved franchises by doing something with it, the FANS wouldn’t have to step in and pay tribute to your greatest ignorantly forgotten and ignored games.
I’ll roll in on this. I understand the need for them to protect their IP, even if it’s one they haven’t revisited since the cancellation of Streets of Rage 4 (It wasn’t even revived for Sega Ages), but at the same time I don’t see how the release of this could do anything but make people remember how great a series this was.
I do hope they come to some sort of agreement, but I can totally understand if they aren’t able to. At the very least I’m happy they waited until it was fully released, just so there is a version of this out there in the wild.
I agree with Bill Zoeker on this. If they just change the colour palette for the main characters and called it ‘Streets of Anger’ I don’t see how Sega could do anything.
Oh well, we can only hope.
If they don’t protect their IP they will lose it. It may be a bummer for the people who worked hard on it, but they should have known it was going to happen. Like Stevie said just palette swap the player characters and change the name.
One thing I don’t understand is why they let hundreds of fan Sonic games get out with lots of press but shutdown this one Streets of Rage remake. I do wonder if Sega has something up their sleeve related to the series though.
I was thinking the exact same thing, Alex. There are countless Sonic fan games including that highly talked about Sonic Fan Remix that was released when S4:EP1 was brand new and not one single complaint came from SEGA. They had better be doing something with this classic series or otherwise this would be as low as that Chrono Trigger fan game situation.
Considering all of the circumstances in this case that put the remaker in the right, it is my highest hope that Sega will actually pick up this game, put it through Quality Assurance and distribute it. Sega would earn 10 million awesome points for that.
I don’t know. I’ve been watching a Let’s Play of Sonic 2006, and I don’t think Sega’s Quality Assurance standards have historically been all that hight.
It’s pretty polished as it is, and according to the manual it’s.. playable on the Wii? What the hell? I may have to confirm this.
I’m shocked. Sega is generally pretty good to their fans,so this is just bizarre.