A few days ago, one of our readers pointed out that someone had taken a level from the original Castlevania and had recreated it in the Unreal Engine 4. Despite it being a bit rough I thought it looked decent and even liked the parallax scrolling that was in the foreground throughout the level. As impressive as it was, I figured it was just a tech demo or a budding developer showing their skills as a pitch to some gaming studio.
Turns out that it’s much more and I really don’t agree with this. The team behind this demo, Dejawolfs, has taken to Kickstarter to “fund” the remainder of the development of this remake. See what I’m getting at? How can you try and fund development of a title that you don’t own the rights to? This is a bad practice and one I hope doesn’t become commonplace.
If you thought Nintendo came down hard on their Pokémon fans by forcibly killing off their self-funded fan-made games, what do you think Konami is going to do here? The moment that someone donates to their cause, this instantly becomes theft. Perhaps the only saving grace here is that they’re asking for $73,000 – I highly doubt this is going to get funded. Part of me wonders what the hell Kickstarter is doing by not checking on the stuff that gets added over there. The moment someone said “funding” and “Castlevania” by anyone other than Konami, it should have been a done deal.
To Dejawolfs, you made a great demo but trying to use someone’s else’s property, without permissions… and even worse, asking for money to fund it. That’s a huge no-no, I’d take this down before Konami gets involved. If they aren’t already involved that is. For anyone looking to help fund this, please don’t. Don’t prompt this sort of thing, we don’t need this.
