Wonderful way to run the thread into personal attacks.
Remember the reason we are here is to try and bring back City of Heroes.
JaguarX - you are completely off base on the rocket thing. This is SOFTWARE, ARTWORK and WRITING. This is a creative work. You have someone who purchased the rights to use this work and publish it. Now they decided - we don't want to use it anymore.
I am not basing it on whether you worked there or not, I am basing it on the same premise as abandonware - rather than have it lost for the ages - you put the game into the public domain up until they decide to use it again - if they do you stop all work on it and shut the servers down again as they roll it out.
I seriously wonder if they would be willing to turn the game over to a group specifically to do this?
See that is the thing. It's too early to call it abandonware. They didn't say they are not using the IP and other stuff yet. For all anyone know they may be using portions of the IP in various new projects they may have planned. And from what I gather so far no one yet have purchased the right to use and publish this work yet. Even when Cryptic abandoned it, NCOSF still had to purchase the rest of the rights.
Even with writing and artwork, just because the artist isn't adding to it or making sequels using the original artwork doesn't mean they totally abandoned it immediately or automatically give up their rights and claim to it. Unless of course they actually say they do. Either way, they still own the right to their work and art until they relinquish it, regardless of how often they use it in that type of realm. In fact even dead music artist even though they are dead and if the record company don't own the rights, the estate(family) of said artist still get paid and people still must pay for it. Like those listings of dead artists that are still pulling in money for their estate even though they been long dead. And many of them still have unreleased tracks that by definition someone still owns, and just because it isn't released or planned on released doesn't mean it's fair game to use.
Many games been shutdown, as people pointed out, only to come back a few years later, sometimes under new ownership. They never said they didn't want to use it anymore never again just yet. It's only been a year. Hell, the HM thing is still trying to get negotiation of purchase still and even said that takes a few years or so.
And if the game did come back, think people will shut the servers down? It's already been said they will release to the wild and make it impossible to shut down the servers that is out there.
But they might be willing to, as I suggested earlier, if someone simply asked them. Never know. They may say yes they may say nay.
But with the rocket thing, it fits where it supposed to fit. In the context I was using it in was just because someone works for a company and create something while part of that company and they leave for whatever reason doesn't mean they have claim to their work if they agreed to as part of their employment that what they create is property of that employer. If they were freelance, maybe so. And some people do consider their work in the weapons industry as artwork just as some consider things, like a video game, artwork.