Post 06 Jan 2007, 18:03 by Litude
Of course ZuXXeZ still exists, but they are quite busy developing other games. Also, ZuXXeZ seems a lot more interested in answering mails from fans than Joymania is, so if you mail them you'll have a quite big chance to get a reply (Send to Dirk P. Hassinger).
Hugo, thanks for sharing that e-mail with us, and thanks for those graphics reader versions. I hope you don't mind if I put it on the site under KaM2 section.
I think it makes sense that ZuXXeZ owns the rights now that I think of it. I highly doubt that ZuXXeZ bought the rights to Knights and Merchants (at least not directly). Remember that the original Knights and Merchants was published by TopWare? Most publishers want to own the IP of the product that they are about to release, because releasing games is a big risk as it costs a lot of money, and if it fails the publisher has lost tons of money.
To make the risk of loosing money smaller, their contract includes the fact that the IP of "Knights and Merchants" will be given to TopWare. That way, they could still make some additional money in case the game is a flop, and it's succesful, tons of profit can be made by selling the IP rights to another company who is eager to own them.
How did the rights end up to ZuXXeZ then? It's actually quite simple. TopWare wanted the rights for Knights and Merchants when publishing the game and it seems like they got them. As TopWare Interactive was purchased by ZuXXeZ, all the IPs TopWare used to own naturally got transfered to the new purchaser, that is ZuXXeZ.