Ron Gilbert, a veteran of the gaming industry, has announced that he is interested in buying the rights to his Monkey Island series and the classic Maniac Mansion quest from Disney.
The reason for such an appeal was the official refusal of Disney to develop any video games except for mobile ones. What, in fact, Gilbert writes about in a tweet:
Dear @Disney, now that you’re not making games, please sell me my Monkey Island and Mansion Mansion IP. I’ll pay real actual money for them.
— Ron Gilbert (@grumpygamer) May 23, 2016“Dear Disney, since you don’t make games anymore, please sell me the rights to my own Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion.
I will pay for them with real money.”
Disney has decided to completely abandon the creation of games for PC and console in favor of licensing. Similarly, for example, Star Wars Battlefront was developed.
It is clear that with such a policy, the main value for Disney is the rights to the existing titles. And, by the way, Monkey Island has already been licensed once by Telltale Games to develop Tales of Monkey Island, which Gilbert also worked on.
In other words, it is very unlikely that even if Ron seriously (and not through Twitter) turns to Disney, the corporation will agree to such a step.
Ron Gilbert, we recall, is also known as the author of the SCUMM quest engine, on which most LucasArts quests were created. He was also the producer of Total Annihilation, the designer of DeathSpank and was responsible for the development of The Cave.
A source: Developer Online