Halo Studios grants blessing for fan-made Halo “survivors” game

Halo Studios has granted official blessing to a fan project called Spartan Survivors.

Announced via the project’s BlueSky account, the team said that Halo Studios reached out and granted permission to move forward with the game, which is available via itch.io.

The developer had one condition, however: To add a legal disclaimer in the game’s credits and store pages in order to stay compliant. Over at itch, the disclaimer reads as follows: “The Halo video game franchise © Microsoft Corporation. Spartan Survivors was created under Microsoft’s ‘Game Content Usage Rules’ using assets from the Halo video game franchise, and it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.”

As per the guidelines, the company allows for fan projects based on licensed properties as long as they follow a list of specific rules. The assets should not be obtained by reverse engineering Xbox games, for example, nor are the people in charge of the fan project able to sell it—although some exceptions apply for content creation. Spartan Survivors is free on Itch, and will remain so when it launches on Steam and Xbox at some point this year.

“Really love to see the passion you and your team have poured into this experience—it really is fun and we look forward to getting further in our play through and unlocking more stuff,” reads a quote from a Halo Studios representative in the announcement post.

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Spartan Survivors is introduced as a mix of “Halo plus bullet heaven plus roguelike plus shoot ’em up,” and allows you to fend off enemy hordes as either Master Chief or The Arbiter. In the description of the announcement trailer, dated November 2, 2024, it’s said the game is “made by the community, with the community, for the community.”

“We want to thank Halo Studios & Microsoft for their real sympathy toward us,” the team said on BlueSky.

Fan projects getting official permission from studios is a rare occurrence

Even though the Microsoft guidelines have been in place since 2015, it’s still rare to see fan projects meet an official stamp of approval. Studios like Capcom have shut down fan remakes in the past. Others, including Atlus, have sued people running fan servers for online games that were officially sunsetted. DMCA takedowns are common, too, including one from Valve directed at a fan project that attempted to port Team Fortress to the Source 2 engine.

Last year, Aftermath spoke to The Pokémon Company’s former chief legal officer and business affairs Don McGowan about how the company handles cease & desist letters with regards to fan projects. McGowan said that the press plays a big role in the discoverability of fan projects if they get news coverage.

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“I teach Entertainment Law at the University of Washington and say this to my students: the worst thing on earth is when your ‘fan’ project gets press, because now I know about you,” McGowan told Aftermath. “But that’s not the end of the equation. You don’t send a takedown right away. You wait to see if they get funded (for a Kickstarter or similar); if they get funded then that’s when you engage. No one likes suing fans.”