Crash X
[14] Master
Dissidia is now known as @RyujiSakamoto thanks to some...discrete file searching and sources.Well, for what it's worth, I don't think that is likely to occur often with guests in any fighting franchise: Star Wars characters represent a special case as IP as such cases are concerned because of the tight manner in which they are licensed and how the terms of those licenses are stringently enforced--SW being one of the most valuable and policed properties of the world's largest entertainment media conglomerate.
Also, a physical copy would no longer protect against that with today's technology and EULAs; even if the data is on the disc, they could easily disable access to it in an update if they wanted (though the publisher/developers would probably do everything in their power to avoid this until years after the game was past its heyday, and not at all if they could avoid--they are aware of the potential blowback on this actions, but their hands are sometimes tied if the owner of the licensed IP character decides to enforce the terms of the license and pull the character).
But again, I think that (thankfully) this kind of practice (pulling a character from the game, even years later) is likely to remain the extreme exception, rather than the rule. It's kind of a fluke that Star Wars characters got into SC in the first place: it was a cross promotion thing for The Force Unleashed (which the parties seem to have believed would be massive blockbuster) and even then it never would have happened if the IP had been owned by Disney at the time, but this was a still a few years before that.
And actually, to this day you can still play Star Wars characters on SCIV: any copy allows access to The Apprentice, and you can play Yoda on any XBOX copy/Vader on any PS4 version. And if you downloaded the DLC enabling file on either platform, you can still play all three characters. The only thing which has changed is that if you don't have a copy of that file on your physical drive, you can longer purchase/redownload it. Not that I'm by any means defending the practice: I think it sucks big time that a character can disappear like this (even if it Yoda, maybe the least-liked guest of all time), and I wish that the license had been negotiated differently to prevent this. I'm just underscoring that, unfortunately, these days, whether content stays is a less than ever a matter of how it distributed and more than ever about the license agreements.
Ah, thanks man! I've been kinda-sorta around, but just lurking more than anything: work, home and other obligations have really crowded in during recent months. I was active for a bit weeks back, but all my time for the forum ended up being sucked into updating my gallery thread in the CaS subforum. But with Hwang out, I'll probably be at least a little more engaged for the next little bit. :) By the way, where is Dissidia in all of this? Surely he's not absent at this of all SC moments??
Still, welcome back you old rusty bloodstained blade, you. :P