Haven't kept up with the thread but read an article this morning that THJ is officially shut down under judges orders. The article cited that THJ was making $100k per month on the project. Looking at reported revenues for daybreak games, THJ was stealing roughly 1% of daybreak's monthly revenue, which realistically should represent a much larger portion of their profitability given that classic EQ requires little to no maintenance/overhead. That is absolutely a material impact to the company and no surprise that THJ's action led to the lawsuit and ultimate defense of EQ IP.
So yeah, MASSIVE difference between THJ and a volunteer led, unpaid, emu representing the game as it stood in era. They don't care about a free to play community based world where people re-live nostalgia. They absolutely care about people stealing their IP, bastardizing it, and using it to drive substantial revenue away from their company. A company who paid tangible money for the rights to use this IP for profit with the expectation of yielding certain amounts of revenue to make the investment worthwhile (which btw could be the difference between EQ existing at all or not).
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