Buffy and Angel RPG license cancelled

I found out on Monday that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel roleplaying games have had their licenses cancelled.

Both games, based on Joss Whedon's television series', were produced by Eden Studios under license from Fox. Both games used the Unisystem game system common to Eden's other games, such as All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Witchcraft, and Conspiracy X, but with a cinematic flavour. The games sold well enough, but had been falling behind AFMBE and Conspiracy X since the TV shows were cancelled. The main problem was the production of new supplements on a timely basis. Everything had to be approved by Fox. There were a number of completed supplements waiting to see the light of day.

Eden managed to clear up the last remaining business issues with Fox, and signed a new deal. The new deal did not include re-issue of the license. From what anyone can gather, apparently Fox simply felt that the shows were gone and it wasn't worth the time or effort to okay the books for the RPG. The folks at Eden are not happy with this, but the company long since passed the point where they have to rely on the Buffy and Angel licenses.

The games are still available for sale. When Eden is sold out, that's it. They are also available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs, as Eden has been very good about distributing games in PDF format. You can get them from DriveThruRPG.com. No idea how long they will be allowed to keep selling the PDFs.

Eden hopes to have an idea sometime this week about the future of the supplements that had been written but not printed.