Two days ago, BusinessWeek’s Matt Vella prognosticated a beautiful future for user-created content should console game companies like Microsoft “start opening up and letting devoted players tinker with the bits inside.” Now, it looks like Redmond’s giant software company may have set just the precedent required to catapult us into that very future.
Vella cited a controversial recent example in Unreal Tournament III, where multiplayer-FPS-rival Halo 3’s beloved, iconic Master Chief was duplicated in stunning detail on PlayStation 3 — so painstakingly, in fact, that only the Unreal Engine 3’s trademark layer of gloss and its dystopian backdrop served as any hint that one wasn’t actually looking at the original game.
One of Microsoft’s most important intellectual properties on their competitor’s console? We expected ceast and desist letters to rapidly emanate from the woodwork — but today we see a glimmer of hope for leniency when it comes to corporate IP, and from a most unexpected source, Microsoft itself.
Today, Game|Life found this blog post from Microsoft lawyer Don McGowan:
Many people are talking about the Master Chief mod for Unreal Tournament 3, that allows you to play in the character of the Master Chief on the PS3. Many people are surprised Microsoft is “allowing” this.
Actually it’s nothing more than the Game Content Usage Rules (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/developer/rules.htm) in action. When these were developed, people all thought they were focused on machinima. The truth is that while they do address machinima they also allow for a lot of other things. Mods like this are one of them. The developers aren’t selling the mod, they’re not monetizing Microsoft’s IP, they’re just creating something to share their love of the Master Chief on a new platform. It’s a great thing for us and a great thing for the gaming community. And much though I love my friends at Epic, Unreal Tournament isn’t Halo. This will also remind people of just how great the Halo games are and remind them that if they’re done with the user-created faux-Halo experience, the real Halo is available only on the Xbox 360. And no one is taking characters from PlayStation games (do they even have any games?) and putting them on our platform…
Good news indeed, but in our humble opinion, news that comes one year and seven months too late. Why wasn’t DonkeyXote tilting at the Microsoft windmills then?
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