As you may or may not know, Mickey Mouse, the mascot of the Disney Corporation became public domain today. At least, the version of Mickey that appeared in Steamboat Willie became public domain. That means Disney no longer has exclusive rights to it and anyone can do what they want with that version of Mickey.
This isn’t something new. We saw it last year with the dreadful attempt at a Winnie The Pooh horror film, Blood and Honey. So, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that it took less than 12 hours for the first unlicensed Mickey Mouse project dropped.
Enter Infestation 88 from Nightmare Forge Games. They have created a trailer. I’m not going to call it a game. It’s just a trailer for a generic horror game that uses a twisted, and poorly rendered, version of Steamboat Willie as a monster. There’s no news on when the game will be out or what the game is even supposed to be about. This is all that the studio is currently saying about it:
“Infestation 88, a new horror game that aims to blend terror with nostalgia (in the vein of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey) by twisting the now-in-the-public-domain Steamboat Willie into something much scarier.”
We aren’t mad at companies using IP that has become public domain. We are mad at it for being lazy crap. The same could be said about Blood and Honey and I’m sure it will also be said about the director’s other planned horror films on Tigger, Peter Pan, and Bambi.