Last year's Friday the 13th is a fun spin on the Jason Voorhees saga and the struggle of teens at Camp Crystal Lake to survive his onslaught. Fans had been looking forward to new features, but they'll have to remain content with the game's current state indefinitely. That's because publisher Gun Media was left with no choice but to cancel all future DLC and content updates -- all due to a copyright fight over the Friday the 13th movies.

Victor Miller, the screenwriter of the original Friday the 13th, is engaged in a lawsuit with representatives for the director, Sean Cunningham (who agreed a licensing deal with Gun and is listed as one of the game's producers). The parties don't agree over who owns the rights to the franchise. Cunningham says Miller wrote the movie on a work-for-hire deal and doesn't have any rights to the series, but Miller says that a copyright law provision means the rights revert to him. Miller issued a termination notice in 2016 for the current copyright holders' claim to the franchise rights, and that is "purported to take effect on July 15, 2018," according to a filing.

Since Gun canceled the DLC about a month before that date, it looks like the publisher was holding out as long as possible for a decision on the case before acting. Gun said that an initial decision was expected last October, though it may take some time to resolve the case. Until the legal issue is cleared up, Gun can't release any new content; if the case drags on for a long time, it might reach the point where it just doesn't make sense anymore for Gun and developer IllFonic to release any DLC.

Among the updates Gun and IllFonic had to nix are the Grendel map, more play modes, clothing and emotes, along with playable characters like Uber Jason and additional counselors. However, Gun still plans to add dedicated servers for the console versions, and to continue work on maintenance and bug fixes.

“I’ve seen a lot of people dragging Victor [Miller] online as if this is his fault. It’s not,” Zerner began. “The Copyright Act includes a provision that states that an author can terminate any transfer he or she has made after 35 years. Congress added this provision to allow creators (writers, songwriters, etc.) who sold their rights cheap to have a second chance. In the case of Victor Miller, he was originally paid about $9,500 for the original Friday the 13th script, which turned into 12 movies, a very successful video game and lots of Jason Voorhees merchandise. This franchise Victor helped create made hundreds of millions of $$$.”

Zerner continued, “But Victor was not entitled to any of that money. Victor did what the Copyright Act allows him to do, he sent a notice of termination to Sean [Cunningham], giving Sean two years notice of the termination (which would occur in June 2018). The way it usually works in these cases is that the producer and the terminating writer will then have the two year period to work out a deal on how the money will be split on future projects (the termination does not affect movies already completed).”

“But Sean and Victor would need to make a deal because the termination only affects the Friday the 13th U.S. rights. Because of the quirks of copyright law, even after termination, Sean would still own the rights outside the U.S. But instead of making a deal, Sean sued Victor, claiming that the agreement that Victor signed in 1979 is not terminable. And the fact is that this is a very new area of law, so there is not a lot of guidance for judges on who is right. Both sides have very capable lawyers who are arguing the case. One of the problems is that although both sides argued motions for summary judgment last October, the judge in the case still hasn’t ruled. This has really slowed things down. I’m sure that everyone involved believed that there would be a trial long before the termination occurred.”