Atlus sues groups behind Shin Megami Tensei MMO revival projects

Atlus has filed a lawsuit against a group of Shin Megami Tensei fans for creating and operating servers for its defunct Shin Megami Tensei MMO ‘Imagine Online'. The game shut down back in 2016, but fan servers have kept the game alive in the years since. 

Over the years, many MMO fans have taken it upon themselves to keep these games alive once developer support comes to an end. Fan servers for games like Star Wars: Galaxies, City of Heroes/Villains and more continue to exist today and we've never seen developers take a strong interest in shutting those efforts down.

That now changes with Atlus and Imagine Online. Reportedly, the lawsuit was filed in December 2021 against groups called COMP_Hack and Rekuiemu, two of the teams keeping the game alive with their own servers. Due to the lawsuit, popular fan server ‘ReImagine' is also shutting down after 5 years of operation.

According to ReImagine's statement on the matter, no Cease & Desist requests were sent ahead of time, so these groups were immediately thrown into strong legal action. This is why ReImagine is making the effort to shut down now, before any potential issues arise.

Atlus claims these fan projects have done “irreparable damage” to the company and is seeking up to $25,000 per violation of copyright. One of the sticking points in the lawsuit appears to be revenue generation and copyright issues. These fan projects copied the game's main website design and had fake copyright notices. This could be why COMP_Hack and Rekuiemu were targeted and not ReImagine. In a statement, the ReImagine team said that it has never accepted donations or sought out any revenue for its project, while the other two may have been doing just that.

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KitGuru Says: Imagine Online wasn't the biggest MMO out there, but the game clearly meant a lot to a set of fans around the world. Still, if these particular fan projects copied the main website and looked to generate revenue from the game, then we can see why issues were raised. 

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