Hello Everyone,
First off to ease the tension you can watch the first two YouTube videos of the announcement
here and
here. Future videos will be released under the YouTube username CEMemorial.
If you haven't been here since the C&D please read some of the informative posts below me which clear up some common misconceptions about Crimson Echoes.
I know it has been awhile since the last update, unfortunately the wait wasn't as productive as I had hoped for. It's time to fill everyone in on what has happened since we received the C&D.
On May 8th we received a C&D from Square Enix. The following Monday I managed to talk to a lawyer at their NA headquarters. We talked for awhile but it was very unproductive. He is very good at his job and it was quite obvious that I wouldn't get any information out of him (all of his responses were less than 3 words). The only part of the conversation I was happy with was that I agreed to not update the site about the conversation if they would give me some sort of official response to this whole fiasco. I was happy with this because at the time several people thought we were making up the story and an official response would prove it was legit and also just be awesome. Since talking to the lawyer I have been in contact with PR rep from their NA office asking for said update. I regret to inform everyone that yesterday Square Enix backed out from releasing an official response.
I'm not sure if this was some sort of low tactic by them to wait for the story to die down or if everything is just badly organized over there, but I'm really really angry about this. I wasn't deluding myself into thinking that they were going to drop the C&D but I did think they would give a more PR friendly response to the game something as simple as "thanks for supporting the franchise but we are legally obliged to make you stop developing this game" would have made me happy. Now the only response Square Enix gave to what might quite possibly be their most devoted fans was a poorly worded "legalese" speak C&D.
I realize that a significant portion of the internet is wearing tin foil hats and believes that we are making this up. There isn't much I can do to dissuade them, I have decided not to release the email/name of the person I was talking to. I'm not sure how influential she was in the decision but in case she is innocent I don't want to completely obliterate her mailbox. I might later release the emails themselves with personal data blacked out.
There is some good news though. Today I am proud to announce the "The Month That Could Have Been" feature. Hopefully by now you have seen Faustwolf's amazing trailers for the game. These trailers were able to be made because FW recorded his play through. Over the last couple weeks we have worked with him to add some director commentary to these videos and will be releasing them throughout the month of June as they are completed. I want to make one thing very clear: These videos were created during beta testing of the game, this is not the final product, and all copies of Crimson Echoes have been destroyed.
I encourage everyone to spread these videos to the far reaches of the internet. This is the final remnants of several years of work by several people across the globe (literally). We hope these videos will accomplish a few goals:
a) show that we actually did have an almost complete game
b) Hopefully people will say we aren't faking this (why would we fake a C&D if we had an almost complete game)
c) Let people know the plot that we have developed
In other news, we have banned two IP addresses associated with longtime Compendium member Dark Serge, who was in perfectly good standing until he made an alt account called "Alienat0r" over at Kagero Studios and proceeded to claim himself perpetrator of a denunciation email laced with false information about Crimson Echoes. Special thanks goes to new Compendium member kattrali for spearheading the investigation of Alienat0r and gathering the evidence that ultimately led us to uncover him.
We continue to hold that the denunciation email purportedly sent to Square Enix constituted a ridiculous attention grab and that even if it was real, it had little bearing on Square Enix's ultimate decision to C&D Compendium fan projects. However, we understand that fan project teams operating in other communities may wish to be on the lookout for this character. For that reason we are providing a list of his various aliases. However, bear in mind that he may use different aliases in the future now that these have been discovered and outed:
Robbert Bruggeman
justrob
Bridgeman
CyrilCyberpunk
Alienat0r
Hellspawns
Dark Serge
The fact that Mr. Bruggeman incompletely blanked out his name in the denunciation email shown at Kagero does nothing to dissolve our suspicions that this was a hoax and that he was, in fact, interested in being caught for the attention that would likely ensue.
As usual I will spend the next couple days trying to answer any questions that anyone may have across the internet.
--JP
