Crothian said:
Does Eden own any of the Firefly rights? I'm curious why they would contact them and ask them to remove it.
They don't, but they've dealings with Fox. George probably told them to take it down because it was an IP violation, and he didn't want to see them hit by Fox. Eden's setting stuff was Firefly with the serial numbers filed off, ie. no IP violations, the QAGS stuff is a big ol' pile of IP infringement. It was pretty dumb on the part of the QAGS guys to publically announce it, as they were setting themselves up to get hammered by Fox. That said, George has tendency to skirt around details and then get openly frustrated because people misunderstand his vagueries.
For the record, the official RPG will be published by
Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd later this year, but it's based on the 'Serenity' property, not the TV series. Just to head off speculation, it's already been announced that it will not be d20/OGL.
That out of the way. It's sucks that
AEG chose not to renew their licence, as their stuff was good, really good, Since Stargate's been only building in popularity, the deal was probably unadventageous to AEG for them to continue with it. (Probably the price tag.) I hope that whomever, if anyone, that picks up the licence has the best of luck with the licence, as they've got big shoes to fill.