Netrunner Derezzed on the Gatling Engine

by Jens Kreutzer

What happened on 1 September 2004 was a hard blow indeed for the Netrunner community: Together with some other games, Netrunner was removed from the list of playable games on the GatlingEngine. Even the Netrunner message board was simply not there anymore, derezzed overnight. This is terrible news for every Netrunner enthusiast who has played a game online and witnessed the beautiful representation of the cards, the counters and other game information. But it must be devastating for Eric Platel, who was the project leader and had made a huge effort to make the Netrunner conversion a reality.

What had happened? As Bug Laden, the mastermind behind the GatlingEngine, explained soon afterwards, he had received word from the law department of Wizards of the Coast: "The Wizards/Avalon Hill games are being taken down by compliance to a Cease & Desist order issue by Wizards of the Coast attorneys. As you might know, Wizards, Avalon Hill, and Hasbro are all the same companies. The removal of Yu-Gi-Oh is a preventative measure. Even though the game is offered for free, we received no formal permission from Upper Deck." Next to Netrunner, this list included:

ARC Systems by Wizards of the Coast
Battletech by Wizards of the Coast
Earthquake by Wizards of the Coast
Harry Potter by Wizards of the Coast
Portal by Wizards of the Coast
Stratego Legends by Avalon Hill
Titan: The Arena by Avalon Hill
Yu-Gi-Oh by Upper Deck

It is not totally unexpected that Wizards finally objected to the use of their property by the public - from the company's point of view, this is completely understandable. On the positive side, it means that Bug Laden's web project has become so successful that Wizards have noticed it, but that is some small consolation of course. It seems that we are back to the much more low-profile NetNetrunner and IRC (Internet Relay Chat). It is rather disappointing that the next World Domination tournament cannot happen on the GatlingEngine now, because everyone seemed to be pretty much fed up with IRC.

Eric, though your project was cut short by the powers that be, I'd like to thank you once more for what you have done for the Netrunner community. At times, Netrunner was one of the most popular games on a list that included dozens of others. We even did some demos for new players (who liked the game in most cases), which is a rare thing indeed these days. I'd also like to thank everybody else who helped support Eric in his efforts; this includes a lot of people who scanned card images and made them available. Thank you, guys - we had a great time.