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[UPDATE] The ‘Friday the 13th’ Game Has Claimed its First Victim

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Update: The developer of Last Year has offered an update on the situation, saying “The owners of Friday The 13th feel one of Last Year’s Killer designs looks too similar to Jason so they submitted an IP infringement to Kickstarter to take our page down… I’m changing the mask of that particular character and re-uploading it so we can get it resolved and move forward!”

Jason Voorhees won’t be returning from his decades long vacation from video games for another nine months and he’s already claimed his first victim. Last week, the Kickstarter page for the indie slasher game Last Year was taken down and replaced with a claim of a copyright violation submitted by the rights holders of the Friday the 13th film franchise.

For the unfamiliar, Last Year is an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game that raised a massive amount of money — over $114,000 — on the popular crowdfunding website last year. In it, a team of player-controlled teens is hunted by a masked murderer who is controlled by another player.

The problem with that description is it could also be used to describe the recently announced Friday the 13th game.

There’s plenty room for two asymmetrical horror games about masked psychos hunting down teens, but one look at the concept art for Last Year and it’s immediately clear they’re using F13 as a source of inspiration. The bad guy that’s featured in the art (see above) that was used to raise all that money on Kickstarter could easily be mistaken for Jason.

Crystal Lake Entertainment is fully within their right to protect their franchise, just as the rights holders of the Halloween movie franchise were within theirs when they had Pig Farmer Productions rename their Halloween game to Babysitter Bloodbath.

In this case, there’s a not-insignificant amount of money involved, so I’d be surprised if it’s resolved through a simple name change. I’ve reached out to the developer of Last Year to see if they can shed some light on the situation. Stay tuned.

YTSub

Gamer, writer, terrible dancer, longtime toast enthusiast. Legend has it Adam was born with a controller in one hand and the Kraken's left eye in the other. Legends are often wrong.

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One of Clive Barker’s Final Convention Appearances Will Be at New Jersey’s Monster Mania in August

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Clive Barker

We told you earlier this month that horror legend Clive Barker is leaving the convention scene behind to focus entirely on his writing, with various upcoming projects in the works.

A series of final appearances from Barker will begin at Days of the Dead Chicago this month, and we’ve learned Barker will also be coming to Monster Mania in New Jersey.

Clive Barker will be signing at Monster Mania 59 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which runs from August 2 – August 4, 2024. Stay tuned for more info from the convention.

Barker’s official statement earlier this month explained, “… it’s time to focus entirely on writing. I’m not stopping public events because I’ve lost delight in meeting you all over the years. I’m as passionate as ever about sharing my imagination with readers and moviegoers around the world. In the very room where I’m writing these words, I have the manuscripts for a very large number of projects (Thirty-one of them), some very close to completion, others still telling themselves. There are some wild projects in this collection of works, whether close to finished or done. There are also stories that you all knew I would be finishing.”

“Abarat IV and V are amongst the books at my feet,” he continued. “So is the Third and final book of The Art and the sequel to The Thief of Always. There are also return visits to characters and mythologies you may have thought I would never return to.

“I hope I am still able to surprise you in the decades ahead.”

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