Right... Garriot loved them, and what would have happen if he didn't? Do you happen to know if the modders asked him if they could do a mod based on his work?
<SNIP another load of semi-truths>
Before you start lecturing, realize that (indeed, infamously) Garriott doesn't own the TM / rights to the Ultima series. Origin Games does, and that's owned by EA.
Electronic Arts has allowed numerous fan games to release, free of charge, including remakes of their existing games. However, they have never GRANTED permission for these games, as that would imply some legal relationship that they cannot afford to see exist. So fan games exist in a sort of å µrey area? neither actively encouraged nor purposefully destroyed. That is a big difference over some other game studios, who guard their intellectual property from even their own fans...
For all intents and purposes, EA owns everything having to do with the Ultima franchise, except the character of Lord British, which is retained by Richard Garriott. This includes all of the game titles, artwork, music, characters, descriptions, etc. Copyright law is difficult to sort through, because it does provide rights for advertising, review, and fair use, which can be extremely confusing.http://lycaeum.ultimacodex.com/fan-games/Modding the D:OS engine to do a remake of Ultima VII would fall under the T&C of the two mods I linked - because you're using someone else's engine.
On the other hand, if you're merely porting / providing a 'working platform' to allow old games to work on a system, you'd follow the route of something like the
Exult project, where you require the original source files from disk (*ahem*).
GOG games still carries it.
That said, Exult is no longer being developed, suffers from game breaking bugs, and probably doesn't play nice with Windows 8. Ultima IV-VI are still available (
GoG again), however neither Lazarus nor the U6 project have been impacted.
So, Ultima VII & Serpent Isle would be a grey area - however, re-imgagining it under the D:OS engine would
more than likely be perfectly ok.
You basically disregarded copyrights, just because you disagree or ain't making money.
No, I did quite the opposite. Next time - instead of arguing, how's about five mins of research, eh?
