Comment by h4ck_th3_pl4n3t
5 days ago
Note that companies usually ignore fan projects like this and don't mention them at all. If they would mention and tolerate them, it weakens their intellectual property in a future lawsuit.
Once fan projects get too much traction, companies have to cease and desist them because that's the way intellectual properties work in the law. It usually has nothing to do with whether it was a cool project or not, it's just that there's way too much money at stake when not defending your IP.
Amusingly I actually have Video of Atari's Lead of Marketing playing OpenRCT2 on Stream, giving away RCT2 Keys to promote RCT World. To this day, Atari has left us alone though, so yeah it's pretty much not worth it to them to try anything.
If I recall correctly, somebody found out that the original creator of the game, Chris Sawyer, despises the OpenRCT2 project -- but he can't do anything about it, because the rights belong to Atari.
Is there any way for a company, Lego in this case, to adopt a fan mod or remake, to make it legitimate IP/copyright wise?
Absolutely. They just have to license it, and that license can be for a nominal (think $1) cost.
That said, Lego doesn't own the game, so if it came down to it, they could strip all the references to "Lego" from it and probably be fine.