Skip to main content

Activision is planning something for ‘King’s Quest’ after recovering the rights from Telltale Games [updated]

Kings Quest

UPDATE: We’ve got word from Telltale Games, via senior VP of publishing Steve Allison, that King’s Quest is now back in Activision’s hands. Telltale briefly entertained the possibility of spinning out the license to a third-party studio, but ultimately decided against it. Still no word from Activision. You can read Telltale’s official words on the matter right here:

“While we deeply love King’s Quest here at Telltale, we can confirm that we are no longer working on the franchise. There was a time last year that we investigated partnering with third party developers to produce the game as a partnership but decided against outsourcing.  We are not privy to what plans Activision has for the franchise, if any.” 

– Steve Allison, Senior VP, Publishing, Telltale Games

ORIGINAL POST: Telltale Games confirmed back in 2011 that the studio was planning to deliver games based on Bill Willingham’s Fables comic book series and Sierra On-Line’s classic King’s Quest series of adventure games. We all learned last week during the 2013 Game Developer’s Conference that Fables is up next for The Walking Dead studio, but there’s been no mention of King’s Quest in quite some time. It seems that the rights to the series have reverted back to Activision, with the publisher planning to do something with the series on its own.

Confirmation comes from Replay Games president and founder Paul Trowe, who successfully launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that will see an HD remake of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards released on PC/Mac/Linux and mobile platforms in the coming months. Trowe confirmed during our GDC chat that Sierra co-founder Roberta Williams is interested in working with him post-Larry, depending on how the game performs. Williams created King’s Quest, but Trowe seems less certain that the potential down-the-road collaboration would be the return to Daventry that fans might be hoping for.

“Activision’s probably not going to give us the King’s Quest rights,” Trowe told us. “[Telltale] had it, and we were going to license it from them to make the remakes.” Telltale senior VP of publishing Steve Allison told Trowe that it was an issue of bandwidth; the studio behind 2012’s The Walking Dead simply did not have the resources to handle King’s Quest, what with a second season and the launch of Fables both in the works. 

“Then I talked to the guys at Activision and they were like, ‘No, we’re pulling it because we’re going to do it ourselves,'” Trowe revealed. He doesn’t know what the publisher’s plans are for King’s Quest, but they don’t seem to include either Telltale or Replay. We’ve reached out to Activision for comment and will update this post accordingly when we hear back. Be sure to check out our full interview with Trowe, and to head back here tomorrow for our extensive GDC chat with Telltale CEO Dan Connors.

Editors' Recommendations

Multiple high-profile iOS games delisted, removed from iTunes user purchase histories
user purchase histories altered on ios to prevent game redownloads ghosttrickremove thumb

Capcom's acclaimed point-and-click adventure game Ghost Trick is among several high-profile titles that disappeared from the iTunes App Store over the past few weeks, and users report that affected games are no longer showing up in their purchase histories, rendering the apps completely inaccessible.

The removals follow the recent launch of Apple's iOS 9 update, which introduced game-breaking bugs for Ghost Trick and thousands of other apps. Instead of addressing the issue, however, Capcom and other publishers are now opting to remove their games from Apple's storefront entirely.

Read more
Telltale throws Game of Thrones stars into ‘A Nest of Vipers’ next week
telltale game of thrones episode five july gotep5 thumb

Developer Telltale Games revealed that the latest episode in its ongoing Game of Thrones adventure game series will premiere next week for consoles and PC platforms.

Titled "A Nest of Vipers," the penultimate fifth episode of Telltale's series splits its starring characters across a number of potentially deadly situations. Asher is embroiled in a pit fight, while Mira must deal with the aftermath of her talks with Cersei.

Read more
King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember continues a classic Sierra series in July
kings quest returns july 2015 kqjuly thumb

Sierra's classic adventure game franchise King's Quest will return as an episodic series next month, developer The Odd Gentlemen announced today.

King's Quest: A Knight to Remember is the first entry in a planned five-episode series for the PlayStation 4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC platforms. A compilation that includes a playable epilogue is now available for pre-order.

Read more