Friday the 13: The Game has been killed one more time: Fan-made 'Resurrection' project derailed by lawyers over 'cavalier disregard of copyright law'

A plan to bring the not-quite-dead asymmetrical survival joint Friday the 13th: The Game back to life has been abandoned just days after it was announced thanks to a cease-and-desist letter accusing the project of «cavalier disregard of copyright law.»

The axe first fell on Friday the 13th: The Game way back in 2018 thanks to a legal dispute over ownership of the property that halted development of the game. It was a slow crawl into a dark hiding place from there, with the metaphorical monster close behind: The project was permanently halted shortly after the legal problems began, dedicated servers were killed in 2020, and it was removed from sale at the end of 2023 when the license to the property expired, although the game itself was set to continue to run until «at least» December 31, 2024.

It was a shame, because despite some jank and server issues we quite liked Friday the 13th, saying in our 75% review that «it's twice the price of Dead by Daylight, but with richer comedic potential and more to do in any given match.» (Comedy, after all, is a big part of these things—look at the success of Content Warning for proof of that.)

Anyway, sad situation but that's how it goes with these things. But on April 1, Friday the 13th: The Game – Resurrected announced its presence on Twitter, with a release date reveal promised for April 15 and a snazzy bit of key art.

Via Bloody Disgusting, the mod makers promised that everything in the base game would be included in Resurrected along with content that didn't make it to the official release, further content would be added through post-launch updates, and—this is where it gets really dicey—«You won’t need base game to enjoy our mod. The download will be available in our discord server!»

The timing was perhaps suspect: April 1 is a big day for fooling around, after all. But the announcement looked serious, and in any case I'm not sure what the joke would be. But just one week later, the whole thing ran into a wall in the form