Back in July, we covered a story about Interplay issuing a cease & desist to a promising Clayfighter fan project called ClayFighter Resculpted. Well, now it appears that Resculpted isn't the only fan project that Interplay has targeted, with the MUGEN fan game Clayfighter Infinite Clayfare also receiving a similar message from the company "to cease development and promotion" before "formal legal action" is taken.
Just in case you're unfamiliar with what MUGEN is and are in need of a quick explainer, it's essentially a freeware fighting engine for PC, which allows creators to make their own fan games and character content.
The creator of Infinite Clayfare (known as Basara-kun online) was using it to develop their own Clayfighter fan game inspired by the original titles, which used many of the classic Clayfighter characters they had already produced for the engine. Interplay, however, found out about this and is now requesting that Basara-kun remove all Clayfighter content from their various websites and stop infringing on the company's copyright.
The news was shared earlier today on Twitter by the user MarioNumbers, who posted a screenshot of a message from Interplay's legal counsel Christopher Nelson online.
Judging by the date on this email, this message was sent back in July of this year, shortly after the company issued the cease and desist to ClayFighter Resculpted, but the Clayfighter Infinite Clayfare pages haven't issued any public statement (to our knowledge) about whether it is going to abide by these terms. In fact, it has just released a second beta of the fan game last month.
Obviously, we know Interplay is well within its right to shut down any projects using its intellectual property, but we can't imagine it's exactly endearing itself to its remaining fans. Especially since the Clayfighter series hasn't seen a new game since 1998, with the company bodging its own attempts at a revival.