Learned about it from Lauren Faust's Twitter.

I never supported this project, but like you said, it's a matter of principle. I'm sorry for them and I wish them luck in the future.

Ok,I can explain this. Most entertainment companies,herein referring to any company that produces an entertainment product,in this case,toys,have 2 sides. You got your creative talent and you got your corporate machine. The creative talent actually puts forth the effort to make the product something people want,and are usually the ones who interact with the fans. So the "person" who saw Fighting is Magic and thought it was cool was probably on the creative team. This C&D stuff is usually by corporate. Now,corporate doesn't always do this,some companies see the profitability of fan projects like this for both raising fan appreciation and offering up new talent or even just buying the fan project outright and making it a full,official company product. Sadly,this is not the case here.

Hasbro also has a track record of creating great things and then destroying them. Take,for example,Beast Wars. Largely considered so good it rivals G1,BW redefined the "30 minute toy commercial" TV show. How good was it? Head writers for Babylon 5 were also the head writers for BW. Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio. It was a great show,did much to revive the fandom,and Bob and Larry were universally loved by the fans. And then Beast Machines happened. Beast Machines was the greatest betrayal of a series until the Star Wars prequels came along. As good as BW was,BM was bad. It was utter and complete garbage. Hasbro,for reasons unknown,basically got rid of Bob and Larry and replaced them with the guy who did the Godzilla cartoon. The one based on the 2000 American movie. And to further fuck him over,they told him not to interact with the fans nor learn anything about the canon. Ever since,Transformers never quite got back the popularity it had with BW until the Micheal Bay movies and most of the people going to see that are there for Micheal Bay.

This whole thing with MLP was probably started with the whole Derpy debacle in which a handful of people complained that Derpy was offensive to mentally disabled people. As these people are obviously mentally disabled,I'm guessing that's the source of their claim. Since then,there's been a whole lot of anger,blame,and spin doctoring going on and no one's completely sure of what all is going to happen. However,since making fun of the mentally disabled on TV is an actionable thing,even if it is stupid,wrong,and would never hold up in court,the bad publicity and court costs make it prohibitive.

So the obvious answer is that Hasbro is cracking down on MLP and the fans to avoid lawsuits and basically killing the fandom and the show. On the upside,Lauren Faust,head writer for MLP when it was good,has asked the team behind Fighting is Magic if they want to do a fighting game based on another intellectual property that's all hers. Most likely it'll be that Galaxy Girls thing she's been pimping around. It's a bit too Bratz-like for my tastes,but then,no one really thought MLP would take off like it did either and Skull Girls was awesome,so who knows how it's gonna go down.

That made the Ponies for Little Girls

Hasbro didn't create the original MLP because they love children or wished to make the world a better place, they did it because they love money. There may be more to the story than that, but I wasted my quota of brain cells on the issue five or six words ago...

I hate this too,
it's just like when fans tried to make a 3D Chrono Trigger game,
same situation.

I don't understand the problem if there is absolutely no money to gain from
this, it would seem that people are still within their rights to make something
without being sued considering it's a "fan" project and not a financial project.

doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

I believe the problem with non-profit things like this and the Chrono Trigger remake is potential implications. If someone made a My Little Pony fan game where, for example, Twilight Sparkle goes off on a racist tirade about black people, someone might see it and come to the conclusion, however incorrect, that Hasbro supports the fan game, and therefore, the racist statements.

I doubt very much that would have been a problem with either of the examples mentioned, but it could have been, in theory, so from a corporate standpoint, they had to cover their asses, or they could have lost a lot of money setting things straight after the fact. :P

I don't know,
things usually become apparent
when something obvious like a racist tangent would occur.

but, honestly
this just feels like a corporate greed and control situation.

if you ask my opinion,
If I were the company, before shutting down a project I would have
found a proper way to negotiate earnings between the project being
completed and how to market it.

this was a non-profit fan made project, they expected nothing,
if they got a legal profit out of this then that is a bonus for them,
as well as a huge bonus for the actual company. If they had refused
then you could have made a claim like that to "cover your ass" but this
just seems like they didn't want to pay any one anything and someone
enjoying something for free is apparently worse then someone selling a
product thats not theirs.

(at least thats how it seems with most large corporations.)

This is the second game (that I know of) to be shut down.

There was a game called MLP:FiM online, with equal effort invested. Over a year if I'm not mistaken. They got shut down in quite a similar fashion. A handful of messages, practically overnight.

Sad really, because I played the offline beta of the latter and it was a wonderful little adventure game. I'm surprised Hasbro doesn't hire these teams to create the products under the Hasbro label. I'd gladly buy/pay to support these games/projects. They're obviously capable of great quality games.

Far be it from me to defend a giant, evil corporation like Hasbro, but what they've done in this insance is within their rights as the owners of these characters. As tasteslikegreen points out, there is a certain risk to the company if a fan project becomes too closely associated with them. There's also the fact that Hasbro could lose ownership of these characters if they don't make some effort to assert their rights in this manner. As much as I might respect the hard work that went into coding and development of this game, and despite the fact that they weren't making any money off if their project, it is also true that the creators of this game were using someone else's characters -- without permission.

If anything, I think Hasbro has shown restraint and an indulgence of their fans that exceeds what one typically expects from a corporation of that size (I can't imagine, say, Disney or Lucas ever allowing something like "Bronycon" to happen). Again, I'm not necessarily defending Hasbro, but they're a multi-billion dollar company and they don't really need the bronies. But, at the same time, they've allowed a lot of really cool things to happen (like acknowledging fan-favorite characters on T-Shirts and other merchandise). So far, the delicate "truce" between the corporation and their unexpected fans seems to be holding, in spite of the occasional issue like this one.

I just don't get your hate of ponies. I'd have thought someone like you could appreciate all forms of animation.
Sure, I'm not saying you have to be a brony, but I'd have thought you could appreciate that it's successful and well animated.

It's not well animated. It's flash based animation.


Either way there are people out there like Ish and me that will never appreciate a fandom simply based on it's "popularity," or "success." If it's not to our personal liking, that's enough to hate it. Learn to live with that.

I've don't need to learn anything, I'm just curious as to what exactly it is about it he dislikes. Because he comes across as a bunny that appreciated the animation medium.

Just because it's animated doesn't mean it has to be liked by all who love animation. Content is important too ya know

No I suppose your right.

Reminds me of the Streets of Rage Remake fangame issue.