{"id":333237,"date":"2025-12-08T22:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T22:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/333237\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T22:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T22:07:08","slug":"knights-of-the-old-republic-iis-restored-content-dlc-for-switch-disney-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/333237\/","title":{"rendered":"Knights of the Old Republic II\u2019s ‘Restored Content DLC’ for Switch? Disney lawyers."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Key art for the Restored Content Mod for Mac. Image: Aspyr<\/a><\/p>\n

On a Friday afternoon in the summer of 2022, Michael Blair, an executive at Texas-based video game company Aspyr, sent an email to two people he typically referred to as Zbyl and Hassat Hunter, or HH for short.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not a fun e-mail,\u201d Blair would say nearly three years later, while he was being deposed for an unusual lawsuit that had somehow resulted from the matters of 2022.<\/p>\n

Zbyl and HH were two of the lead creators of The Sith Lords Restored Content Modification<\/a> ( TSLRCM for short, or even just RCM). The mod filled in gaps and provided an alternate ending to the classic Obsidian-developed Star Wars role-playing game Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords, which had launched on Xbox in 2004 and soon afterward for PC.<\/p>\n

Players had really enjoyed KOTOR II but had some inexplicable character moments and an ending that felt<\/a> rushed<\/a>. The game gained a rep as exceptional but unfinished<\/a>. In the years right after KOTOR II\u2019s PC release, enterprising gamers who searched the game\u2019s code found voice-acted lines of dialogue that weren\u2019t used, character moments that had been skipped, and a whole side adventure for beloved killer droid HK-47. A volunteer group of modders, including HH and Zbyl put it together and in 2009 released an initial version of the ambitious restoration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some players believed that this content constituted KOTOR II as it was meant to be PC Gamer has called it \u201cessential<\/a>\u201d and dubbed the unpaid modders \u201ccommunity heroes<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

KOTOR games remained popular, so in May 2022, Aspyr announced their latest port of a classic Star Wars game to a new platform: KOTOR II for Switch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The end of KOTOR II\u2019s Switch reveal trailer. Image via GameSpot\u2019s YouTube channel.<\/p>\n

The Switch port\u2019s debut trailer<\/a> ended with a three-second shocker: \u201cComing soon: Restored Content DLC.\u201d Aspyr didn\u2019t spell it out, but enough fans understood: for the first time, an official version of KOTOR II would receive an official console-compatible downloadable content version of the RCM\u2014and on the heretofore mod-free Nintendo Switch, of all platforms.<\/p>\n

KOTOR II launched for Switch on June 8, 2022. The restored content DLC didn\u2019t come out \u201csoon.\u201d It never came out at all.<\/p>\n

And back on that summer afternoon in 2022, six weeks after the game came out, Blair was emailing Zbyl and HH to tell them that things were going wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our efforts to credit everyone who contributed to the mod,\u201d Blair wrote, \u201cWe have spooked Disney legal and now they have put a new blocker in place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new blocker was a prohibition on releasing the Restored Content DLC for Switch without further clearances around who actually made the mod. The blocker proved insurmountable. That\u2019s despite extensive and at times experimental efforts by Aspyr throughout the rest of 2022 and early 2023 to find a way to please Disney and its subsidiary Lucasfilm Games, their long-time partners in Star Wars game development.<\/p>\n

Finally, in June 2023, after a year of silence about the DLC and amid rising fan frustration, Aspyr announced on Twitter\/X<\/a> that the DLC regrettably would \u201cnot be moving forward<\/a>.\u201d Aspyr offered codes for KOTOR II on PC or other Star Wars games on Switch to compensate..<\/p>\n

Within a month, one of those frustrated gamers, Malachi Mickelonis, sued Aspyr for false advertising. The suit got some attention that fall, first for the novelty of suing over cancelled DLC. Later, in November 2023, I reported<\/a> that Aspyr\u2019s legal reply alluded to how a \u201cthird party objected\u201d to the DLC\u2019s release, killing it.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year both sides of the lawsuit began filing voluminous records to the publicly viewable court record that explain in detail what happened with the restored content DLC.<\/p>\n

The filings, which have not been reported on until now, constitute some of the most detailed and comprehensive records I\u2019ve ever seen about the development\u2013and cancellation\u2013of any feature in a game.<\/p>\n

They involve dozens of internal emails between Aspyr and the modders and between Aspyr and Lucasfilm games. They include over 1,000 pages of depositions with Aspyr and Lucasfilm Games officials. The contain Slack messages, entries in the planning software Jira, a marketing plan for KOTOR II on Switch, sales projections and sales results (down to the single digit.. with some per-state breakdowns: 5,551 copies sold in Ohio as of June 2, 2023), even a contract for the game\u2019s now-delisted trailer (a mid-five-figure fee for a 60-second spot).<\/p>\n

In some of the filings, names or whole passages are redacted; many documents were sealed. In others, fascinating facts from inside the game industry are discussed freely. KOTOR II on Steam sold at 75% of the rate of KOTOR I, according to Aspyr\u2019s records, for example. And a mystery project codenamed Juliet is described as a full, modern remake of KOTOR II, that is\/was in development alongside the previously reported remake of KOTOR I, at least as recently as March.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read through an eye-blearying amount of these documents, in an attempt to go beyond solving Aspyr\u2019s \u201cthird-party\u201d mystery (It was Disney\/Lucas lawyers who did it in, Aspyr and Lucasfilm Games execs say). I wanted to piece together the story and better understand this small piece of gaming history.<\/p>\n

What I found looks like an earnest group of people operating in good faith for years\u2013not the presumed months\u2013to find a way to make KOTOR II\u2019s Restored Content Mod easily accessible for non-PC players. Whether that effort turned into false advertising is something I can\u2019t judge and that a jury won\u2019t have to determine. Last month, lawyers representing the gamers, Aspyr and Lucasfilm Games all said they\u2019d agreed to settle the lawsuit(s)… a second had spawned. They confirmed the settlements just two weeks before a jury trial was set to begin.<\/p>\n

The timeline that follows is my reconstruction of the events: How the idea of the TSLRCM being added to a modern version of KOTOR II became a thing and how efforts to do so fell apart. It goes back further than I\u2019d expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key art for the Restored Content Mod for Mac. Image: Aspyr On a Friday afternoon in the summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-333237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}