Reviving Glover 2 (or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the lawsuit)

[HylianDev]

Glover. Released in 1998, it was a fairly mediocre 3D platformer in an era full of mediocre 3D platformers. I never played it as a kid, but having picked it up recently, it hasn't aged too gracefully either, in my humble opinion.

But, in a surprise twist that surprises no one, there are 90s kids who are drooling over the chance to re-live the glory days of this D-list one-off 3D platformer. The first 90s kids I'll introduce in this story are the people behind Golden Mushroom Studio.

The Germany-based studio have recently started a social media marketing campaign talking about their new Glover sequel:



It gained a modest amount of popularity (check out that dunkey retweet). After all, not-so-good 3D platformers are having a bit of a revival I guess.

But something about this struck me as odd...



Why is this apparent tiny indie company confirming a sequel to this IP for Switch? Can they afford the license? Why are they marketing it with a GIF of the original game?

To find out, I dug deeper...

This statement provides a great summary. Read it yourself, but to summarize:

The other thing tho which we want to address is the licensing situation about the Glover IP. Some of you may have seen the US company Piko Interactive LLC jumping into the discussion over on Twitter claiming that they actually own the IP, but are welcoming us to discuss about licensing it. We already reached out to them and currently are awaiting their response. We have to apologize for communicating we were (soon) owning the IP. Apparently we haven't done our homework correctly and thus were assuming that the registered trademark was already expired even though we did our very best in research prior to the announcement.

So, they do not own the rights to Glover. Furthermore, they thought it was as simple as filing a new trademark, apparently:



They seem to have the very basic ducks in a row for starting an indie company, if this mod's judgement is correct. They're a real company, signed on with all the major console companies, and they even own dev kits. But there's seemingly a pretty glaring error in their judgement on just how IP laws work.

So what became of this? Well, they did the right thing and canned the illegal Glover sequel:



... perhaps even hastily:





But, the story contains another twist... Who are these people that claim to actually own the rights to Glover?



Piko Interactive LLC.



They're a small game development and publishing company that re-distributes old games, or in some cases, works to finally bring unfinished games to their initial release.

So, in conclusion, a tiny indie company who properly works under IP law to produce nostalgic games won out against a tiny indie company who improperly works under IP law to produce nostalgic games. I thought this was a pretty wild story and had to share.

[Mariotroid]

This is an interesting read. I liked the concept of Glover and thought that nowadays they can do a lot more with the concept. It's cool that these games are getting revived!

[HylianDev]

UPDATE: Their website and twitter account appear to have been taken over by Russian porn peddlers. No details on whether they sold it, or both accounts were hacked.

I did a whois lookup, and it still appears to be registered to the studio.

Hylian's day job, little did we know, was saying controversial things on the internet.

you fool!!!! you fixed it wrong!!!!

Bibby Team

[Evil Yoshi Toes]

Well that's an unexpected twist

[Snessy the duck]

well that was unexpected

My Switch friend code: SW-5399-6466-3493

[Beatrice]

Oh wowie what a twist.

and I kiiiiiiinda expected Bubsy 3D to be that "not so good 3D platformer with a revival" (though IMO it looks just OK)

Beatrice Today at 3:13 PM
its brian the skinny legend you fool
Beatrice Today at 1:21 PM
hey wtf thats mymoms feckin name wtf

---

Victor of the MFGG Staff Hunger Games MMXVIII

[Pedigree]

M.Night Shyamalan couldn't have crafted a better twist.

 

[HylianDev]

UPDATE 2: GLOVER BOOGALOO

The website is blank and the Twitter got deleted.

Hylian's day job, little did we know, was saying controversial things on the internet.

you fool!!!! you fixed it wrong!!!!

Bibby Team

[HylianDev]

Here's a bit that I missed: Piko Interactive says they got confirmation that Golden Mushroom Studio is fake?

Not sure exactly what that means. The company appeared to be real and they were able to somehow confirm to a reddit mod's satisfaction that they were a real studio that owned dev kits.

This will probably be the last update.

Hylian's day job, little did we know, was saying controversial things on the internet.

you fool!!!! you fixed it wrong!!!!

Bibby Team

[Snessy the duck]

what the heck is even going on anymore

My Switch friend code: SW-5399-6466-3493

[Mariotroid]

what the heck is even going on anymore

I re read what I said and realized I couldn' follow the original post, much less the rest of this topic.

Ypure not alone.