As you may or may not know, I am a very avid video gamer, with a few titles under my now moldering and ancient belt. I don't get to write about games as much as I used to, but yesterday I caught a bit of news I think I can actually write about here. It's a posting from the team behind SCUMMVM. First, allow me to explain SCUMMVM.

Back in the 1980s and 1990's there was a genre of game known as "adventure." The genre is long dead today, but Sierra and LucasArts made a great many adventure games along similar veins, and the legendary Tim Schafer became super-non-famous amongst geeks for his hysterical writing in such adventure games as "The Secret of Monkey Island," "Maniac Mansion" and "The Day of the Tentacle."

The trouble is that most of these high-quality games were written for long-dead platforms, like DOS and Mac OS 7. To play them today, you need the original game, plus a copy of the open-source, GPL emulator for the game engine, SCUMMVM. SCUMMVM makes old LucasArts games playable again. It also works on a lot of non-Lucas games, and that is where the trouble began.

It would seem that a European developer working with the shambling mess of a company now known (but with absolutely no relationship to the original) as Atari. Mistic Software is the developer behind the Wii versions of some classic kids games built on the adventure game principles. They were also, evidently, built on the SCUMMVM, unbeknownst to Atari. After a few months of wrangling, and some harsh letters, the FSF and the SCUMMVM team announced yesterday that the Mistic team, which had initially called shenanigans when accused of violating the GPL, paid the FSF's legal fees and came into compliance.

This is the first time I've ever heard of a video-game company being accused of violating the GPL. It's also one of the few times the GPL has come close to being tested in Europe. All around, an interesting case that ended the way most FSF cases do: with an out-of-court settlement and a quietly released blog posting about its conclusion.