Very wise approach and quite understandable.msKEN wrote:Being a 100% honest we haven't publicly released a demo or beta for legal reasons. My fear of being shut down by NBCU makes me overly cautious about what I release. If we do get the dreaded knock it off letter from them I'd rather the game be done and out in the wild of the internet than be killed off after a buggy demo. That would be years of work waisted because we couldn't keep working on it.
In fact, if I were you, I'd make sure the code concerning all copyrighted material can be 'as easily' swapped out as possible, just in case such a situation comes down the pike.
Right now, I'm tuned into another person's stream where he's creating his dream reality. It does use copyrighted material and the company has issued a Cease & Desist upon him. Until he satisfied the needs by the minimalist of alterations.
Just saying. Even if at the last second, you have to rename the main character to Mike Night, Bonny Barnstorm and May Curtz, it may come down to the smallest of things to save the overall project. "See? The light bar on the nose is blue. That's not Knight Rider. It is Day Driver..."