Norvezskayasemga.pro team and Kalypso Media
In January 2002, the Canadian company Strategy First released a game that won the hearts of thousands gamers around the world. A special visual style, enhanced gameplay of the previous part, coupled with the plot of the original campaigns, made Disciples 2 a legend of the RTS genre.
19 years have passed. The publishing company went bankrupt during this time, our compatriots from Akella have released an ambiguous sequel, and in 2015 the rights to the series were transferred to the studio kalypso media.
Despite the attempts of fans of the series to reach out to the new copyright holders, there was simply no feedback.
Platform team of norvezskayasemga.pro not going to stand by. To clarify the situation about the license agreement and discuss a number of conditions, hired lawyers appealed on behalf of the community to representatives of kalypso media.
Arseniy Senin, the project coordinator and initiator of the appeal, tells about his impressions received during so-called " contact".
“ If at the beginning there were pleasant conversations with the secretary assuring that the letters have been received and awaiting their decision which consisted in a conditional permission to the community to officially perform all kinds of actions to popularize the Disciples series, not harmful to the copyright holder, and besides at your own expense. Then the circus began, with a cough in the tube, procrastination and avoidance of direct answers. As a result, the office died earlier this year. Or pretended to be dead."
But let's figure out where all the fuss started. In 2021, it is simply difficult to imagine that a serious international media holding cannot adequately establish communication with the community, especially with the help of specially hired people!
I asked Arseniy to tell me everything from the beginning.
“This year we decided to establish contact with kalypso media and approached the issue as responsibly as possible. First of all, the lawyers we hired found out that until 2026, kalypso media still protects the rights to distribute, sell, etc. A group of lawyers drew up a letter with an attached agreement on granting to our community a list of rights, directed at popularizing this series of games. By sending several letters on behalf of the patent attorney Kalypso Media Gmbh ( head office in Germany) and not getting answers to them, calls were made directly by agents from Italy and Germany. "
And from that moment the same hackneyed scenario began, which has been used by representatives of kalypso for several years . It seems that their system administrators just put the filters which send all emails mentioning Disciples to the blacklist.
At first, they deliberately ignored the appeals of individual members of the community, but recently, they decided to go to another level and now, when a crowd has gathered on the doorstep, they pretend that they are not at home. How to scare modest players with legal reprisals, give lectures on copyright protection, and so on - calypso is right here. When you start to communicate with them on the same level - all the arrogance disappears somewhere and behavior reminds not secular at all. Someone will say that we are asking, - yes it is. But we offered to announce the conditions under which a compromise can be reached"
As Arseniy said, this is not the end of the story. We are extremely determined and we are going to get a response from kalypso.
I personally spoke about this in the following way: if the publisher ignores the rights of the community and spits in their direction then he should not be surprised when the arrow of oppression turns to him"
But let's try to think more constructively and hope for a reasonable outcome. As soon as kalypso media gives its answer, you will be among the first who knows about it.