Square-Enix shuts down massive Chrono Trigger ROM hack project

By Rhody Tobin by May 12th, '09 at 11:45pm CST

In what may go down in history as the ultimate “screw you” to fans of a video game series, Square Enix has shut down the Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes fan project. Crimson Echoes was a ROM hack of Chrono Trigger by fans from Chrono Compedium, featuring a brand new scenario, 35 hours of gameplay, and 10 possible endings. Work on the project began in 2004 and was to be completed this month. That’s right, Square Enix waited 5 years to pull the plug at the last minute. All other Chrono Trigger ROM hack projects on Chrono Compedium were also shut down. As you’ve probably guessed, the folks over at Chrono Compedium aren’t pleased with Square Enix’s decision.

We do not accept the validity of Square Enix’s claims, nor the legal rationale underpinning their position. Nonetheless, we are complying with their demands so as to avoid the expenses and burdens of litigation, because, frankly, they can afford a frivolous lawsuit more than we can.

You can see the cease and desist letter in the Crimson Echoes link below. 

Crimson Echoes
via Kombo

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About the Author: Rhody Tobin

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  • http://www.lonely-soda.com RF Larke

    Now, I love Square Enix’s work. They’ve made brilliant works and their games are wonderful. I can fully understand their point of view. Chrono Trigger is theirs. They don’t want anyone screwing with their property. Frankly, I can respect that.

    However I must bring into question exactly what about Crimson Echoes (Or Chrono Trigger Resurrection, anyone remember that?) is distinctly illegal. They weren’t making any money on it, were they? Were the intending to use it as a way to replace Chrono Trigger or otherwise steal from SE?

  • guppy06

    So long as it was a ROM patch and not the ROM itself, there really wasn’t anything illegal from this derivative work (IANAL). But the key thing to remember is that Square-Enix is the video game world’s Disney, litigating early and often in defense of their “brand.” They’d probably try to sue anybody that uses the words “final” or “fantasy” in a title, and I’m sure that it won’t be long until they start cramming in mandatory advertising and previews before you’re allowed to reach a game’s title screen. And how much do they currently spend on lobbying?

  • lz2008

    I’ll have to take Square’s side on this one. Fan art and remixes of video game music is one thing but making a new game without their permission is pushing it big time.

  • guppy06

    The thing is, if they’re not redistributing the original game in some form, it’s not a copyright violation. Fan translations are more of a violation of copyright law than this was. It can’t really compare to remixing, a better analogy would be not sampling, but including a note with your music for how to do the sampling yourself, if you own a copy of the CD to be sampled. “Insert track 2, 1:27 to 2:16 here.”

    Looking at the actual letter, S-E’s using the Project’s own misunderstanding of copyright laws against them; the readme file S-E blockquoted in the C&D shows that the Project thought that altering and modifying the ROM was illegal, so S-E’s lawyers took that and threw it back in their faces with some standard legal-ese to intimidate the Project into submission. Disney and Lucas (among others) don’t try to use copyright law to go after these kinds of things (they know somebody might fight back and win), rather they use the trademark they hold on the characters.

    You can’t redistribute the ROM, you can’t redistribute a fan translation of the ROM (copyright covers the story, in any language), you can’t redistribute a homebrew remake of the game (copyright covers the story, in any medium), but if you distribute a new story (without the original ROM, even if the original ROM is required to actually make use of it), that’s not a violation of copyright.

    The only wildcard is circumventing copy protection, which is illegal for any reason (thanks, Digital Millennium Copyright Act!). The ROM mod may need to break copy protection to apply itself, but… I don’t think the original SNES cart had any protections (some did, but the vast majority didn’t).

    To play devil’s advocate, S-E’s apparently had issues recently with the DS version of the game hitting the web (and it did have copy protection), so maybe they got a little overzealous in pursuit of all things “Chrono Trigger” on the web and didn’t notice this wasn’t the DS version that was being modded, but in the end all this ends up doing is producing bad PR for S-E among fans while opening themselves up to anti-SLAPP claims

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation

    The Project may no longer be hosting the code, and if S-E plans on throwing out C&D’s to every person that ends up hosting it in the future, sooner or later they’ll run into someone willing to call their bluff. There’ll either be a precedent of the suit getting bitchslapped in court, or a precedent of them dropping charges before it even makes it to court, and neither is very good for S-E.

  • lz2008

    Maybe they should have kept it quiet until they were done

  • agent12

    Hello everyone,

    I was the main director of this project. I’ve been trying to go through and offer people some insight into our decisions.

    First off all many questions may be answered here:

    http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,7420.0.html

    RF- We definitely were not going for any money. In fact I’ve been publishing this alot if square wants the game, go ahead and take it we ask nothing in return. We didn’t even put ads up on chronocompendium in case it could be viewed as us using the game to gain revenue. We also hope this isn’t seen as a replacment for either CT, or CC. It’s an interquel between them, and we could never hope to make a game nearly as good as those two.

    Guppy: You are right. We said this in our official statement

    We do not accept the validity of Square Enix’s claims, nor the legal rationale underpinning their position. Nonetheless, we are complying with their demands so as to avoid the expenses and burdens of litigation, because, frankly, they can afford a frivolous lawsuit more than we can.

    It’s just…to much for us sacrifice for a hobby. We love the game and put alot of hard work and passion. But in the end it’s just a hobby. I don’t want a search for my real life name to pull up going to court over a rom hack. I don’t want to tell my boss I can’t come to work today because I’m going to court to fight for rom modification. I have sent an email to EFF about this but have not heard back.

    lz2008:

    Here was our thinking about keeping quiet.

    * to my knowledge no other 2D rom hack had been C&D
    * at the beginning we were very public about the project. It was built in public forums, and the first demo was released publically. In fact we only went private because there was just too much chatter to get anything done
    * we released a 1 chapter hack (prophet’s guile) which had several thousands downloads. It explained what happened after Magus got sent back to Zeal but before crono and company arrived. That didn’t run into the slightest difficulty.
    * we released a second demo (this is where the readme quote comes in) and that didn’t have any problems

    After all of this we honestly believe that Square was OK with us. We got pretty lax with our privacy and began posting a few more project updates. That being said we maybe had like.3 posts in the last year about it? One for skeleton code being done, one for it entering beta testing, and one to get some like tribute art for the release…

    Anyways, I hope that answers some of your guys questions. I’ve been trying to post everywhere but the internet is a big place and this thing has really firestormed through it. But I’ll try to check in.

    Thanks!

    –JP

  • lz2008

    Oh well, at least the game’s designers aren’t reacting like Bob did when Nintendo denied his DS game (at least I hope not).

  • http://creditfeed.blogspot.com/ Rhody

    These guys have more of a reason to be upset. :P (And Bob was much worse.)

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  • Mugen Kagemaru

    Three words, guys.

    “Flames Of Eternity”