Before there was Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Ubisoft’s game about piloting the original Enterprise, there was Star Trek Stage-9, a fan project recreating the Enterprise-D from The Next Generation in Unreal Engine. This week the project is no more, following a cease and desist demand by CBS.
One of the leads on the project, who goes by Scragnog, posted a video on YouTube explaining why it would no longer be getting future updates and development was coming to an end. “On Wednesday, September 12, 2018, we received a letter from the CBS legal department,” he said. “This letter was a cease and desist order. The uncertain future we always had at the back of our minds had caught up to us.”
The team immediately shut down the project’s website and began trying to reach out to the company to try and work on an alternative outcome. After nearly two weeks of not being able to get ahold of anybody, a representative from the legal depart confirmed the Stage 9 team that CBS wasn’t going to budge and the game needed to stay down. CBS did not respond to a request by Kotaku for comment.
Source: CBS Shuts Down Ambitious Fan Effort To Make A Virtual Starship Enterprise
Which goes to show why copyright for such extended periods is such a bad idea. The innovation is killed off and for what? Extended corporate profits, even when they are not making much use of the possibilities? This project was way better than anything CBS churned out.
Robin Edgar
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