UPDATE: It seems as though Hasbro caught wind of the project enough to force Kickstarter to “pause” the fundraising for 30 days. In that time, Hasbro and GameZone must work out the legality of their Intellectual Property claim.
If I were GameZone, I’d just remake the game entirely and change the name. I don’t think you can trademark or copyright game mechanics. HeroQuest is about as simple as it gets.
If this moves forward, you’ll be sure to hear about it here.
I’ve made no secret over the years that I’m an incredibly massive fan of HeroQuest. It’s a game that game out almost 25 years ago and factored prominently into my youth.
Now, a Spanish company called GameZone Minatures is offering a 25th anniversary update to the classic game via Kickstarter.
I was skeptical of the project. Why would Hasbro and Games Workshop not be working on this themselves? The Kickstarter launched just yesterday and is already approaching half a million dollars (Canadian) in contributions. There seemed to be nothing at the launch of the Kickstarter to indicate that GameZone owned the proper license to launch such a Kickstarter.
People like myself and Matt Forbeck raised questions about it, as did the people who exploded the comments.
Can you blame them? GameZone is asking for $150 + shipping for a game that won’t ship until next year, the least people would like to see is an assurance that the project isn’t going to get hit with a cease and desist between now and the completion date, leaving GameZone with the cash and the contributors out in the cold without their money.
Reaching out to GameZone, I was given the following comment:
Hasbro owns ALL HeroQuest rights. Games Workshop was outsourced for the making of the miniatures and have no rights beyond the intellectual property of the fluff and some names.
We got the permission from Hasbro. This contract [states] that we can serve international clients, but we can only serve retailers from Spain.
Those issues regarding Games Workshop IP will be remove and changed. Those Fimirs, from example [will be changed to Drrakks.
As of press time, I’m still waiting on a comment from Hasbro about all of this, but it seems to me that if the work is already being done and the Kickstarter is this popular after 24 hours already, Hasbro would be smart to step in and make a US version. They could cut down on International shipping costs and just piggy back on the work GameZone is doing.
I will update this story when and if I receive a response from Hasbro.
But in the meantime, I’ve tentatively backed this project. $150 is only slightly more than I paid on eBay for my original copy and this set contains SO much more. If this is, indeed, all on the up and up, this might be one of the best Kickstarter’s I’ve ever thrown my money into. But we also have a month to get to the bottom of the underlying licensing issues before we can all pull our money out.
If you’re interested in backing (and I’d recommend it at this point) you can visit the Kickstarter here.