Activision said 'no' to Skyrim modders 3 years into remaking a semi-obscure vampire RPG it published a lifetime ago, so now those modders are reworking it into a new story

The modding team behind Vampire: The Masquerade — Redemption Reawakened was in a weird spot. Hoping to avoid the DMCA/C&D death punch so many fan projects receive, they took their in-progress Skyrim remake of the 2000 RPG to Activision and Paradox, each of which owns the rights to part of the game. With a «yes» from Paradox and a «no» from Activision, the crew is now revising the mod into a «reinterpretation» of the original VtM: Redemption, cutting out everything Activision could sue them for and making it into more of a new story.

Redemption was the first Vampire: The Masquerade videogame, preceding the better-known Bloodlines by four years. It's a much more sprawling, melodramatic story than Bloodlines, following a crusader knight's doomed romance as he gets vamped up in medieval Europe, put in stasis, then awoken in 1999. Redemption's story, characters, and imaginative use of a vampire's immortal lifespan make it worth checking out, but it had some truly horrible early aughts RPG combat⁠—just the sort of game that might benefit from a remake.

Enter Redemption Reawakened, led by modder Galejro. The mod team has made impressive progress bringing both the medieval and modern day portions of Redemption to life, but has struggled with getting the full permission (and attending security from being shut down) they wanted. Bethesda and Paradox⁠—which owns the Vampire: The Masquerade setting⁠—were on board, but Activision, which published Redemption and holds the rights to its specific characters and story, proved squirrely.

In the team's latest development update, Galejro revealed that they were making headway before their contact at Activision was caught up in one of Microsoft's mass layoffs after the acquisition. When Galejro and crew got a hold of someone else at Activision, the answer became a flat no. Redemption Reawakened was dead, long live Vampire: The Masquerade — Reawakened.

Anticipating this outcome, the mod team had focused on building assets and systems