Fawkes Operations Manager Charly Q&A from Project Defiance Discord

The context of this conversation comes from a discussion on a Discord server for Project Defiance which was a developers attempt to bring back defiance using his own code.

Introduction

Hello all, I am Charly - Operations Manager at Fawkes Games Ltd. We have been following the project of reviving Defiance by the community for a couple of months, and I am here to answer any question you could have.

Two questions will you add more content to the game over time? And how.will you monitize it

We have been in business for ~2.5 years, working with old games with very passionate communities, and our approach has been always the same:

Get the game
Understand it together with the players
Clean out all the friction points
Work with the old content the game had, and polish it together with the community to be acceptable
Produce more fresh content. In our 2 other MMOs, we did more than 80 updates so far.

You can read more of what we did in the other games in our website.

https://fawkesgames.com/

Now, with Defiance in specific, the game was closed, meaning that we have no idea how the community will accept the fact of bringing back the game. We are a business in the end - the amount of content we produce in the long run will be strongly linked to the acceptance from the userbase.

In the short run, we will keep it simple and bring the game back to life, expanding it together with you, using all the content produced in the past - what makes sense to bring back will come back, what it doesn't won't or will be changed.

Why defiance in specific? Your about us claims your employees  are gamers but why defiance?

Because we believe there is a nostalgic community behind, looking forward playing Defiance once more - there is also some space in the market despite the game's age, so we see a good opportunity with it in terms of business. We also love to work with old games and have experience with it.

Why put aside a passionate person who took 4 years to get to where he is today and then throw him out like a dirty person? You should be ashamed. (Translated referring to Project Defiance)

We are not putting anyone aside. You need to understand we are a business, and Defiance's license was available. We saw an opportunity and we moved with it. I don't know until what extend the game will perform, but what I know is that we love to involve people that know the game already. 

Many of our team members worked with or played our current games. Whenever we see the game getting out of the nostalgia phase and evolving into a good project on our end giving us the need to expand the team, Alexis will be most likely contacted

Will it work on PS3?

no, we will release the PC version first - we have the rights for both 2013 and 2050 in all the platforms it was before. Depending on the evolution of the 2013 PC version, we will expand.
We can also port it to next gen consoles if the business need is there.

Do you have a website?

https://fawkesgames.com/

do you guys have access to old character data?

no, the game closed and data is gone. It's a fresh start with a completely new company. We will build the game together.

2013 was the most loved, 2050 was a cash grab essentially

we know - we are releasing the 2013 version first.
and we might not even look at the 2050 version if there is no fit with the community

Did gamingo hand over the game page for defiance on steam?

we will release it in our laucher first, together with all our current games. We are in talks with Gamigo to transfer the Steam page too, but that will come after.

It will surely be paid or free but at least the game will be present!

it will be free to play.

Will Zovix and the rest of the project team be considered friendly collaborators, if given the opportunity? This project has been attempting to revive that beloved 2013 version with ideas for improvement, such as private servers (which could probably be done for pc) and the ability to earn some items that were paid only in the game itself.

Yes, we are not closed to anything on that regard. If the community's acceptance is there, and we have the budget to increase the headcount, rest assured that this community and the people behind will be the first ones to be approached to get onboard and help making Defiance a wonderful game.

@Charly  I'm sorry but this all seems a little too good to be true?  How exactly was the license available when Zovix and other have previously attempted to acquire this and been told no by Gamigo? Can you elaborate on how you managed to obtain this and any associated rights for likenesses, tie ins etc? Seemed like a pretty complicated and expensive web to untangle. How did you accomplish this?

We have been in gaming for +12 years (individually, not as a company).

We acquired the rights for other games (smaller ones) from Gamigo, we worked hard on them, provided results and made things easier to get a bigger one like Defiance. You can get into our discord and meet other players from those games, or check the briefing we posted in our website; has links to the yearly wrap-ups from the other games with all the things we did.

https://fawkesgames.com/general/defiance-revival-2025/

@Charly I'm curious, how exactly did you get the original data files. While yes you have the "rights" rights doesn't mean client and server side files. If this was something that you had been working on. Why suddenly now contact Zovix and have him stop his project. Under what extent do you of licensing and data?

We have EVERYTHING related to the game; database (empty), source-code, client, assets, etc. You only get that if it gets transfered by Gamigo - they would only transfer that if there was of course a business agreement bounding it.

Only the database was lost, right?

yes, we don't have users' data/progress.

Will you allow us to know who is funding your business for this acquisition? 

we are self-funded. We have been in business for 2.5y. We started small (servicing other companies first, licensing of smaller games and now Defiance).

You can ready a bit more here:https://fawkesgames.com/about-us/

This one is more of a request type question, will all content from the last available version of Defiance be available right from the start without additional payment? (Things such as the Castithan race, additional zones and missions, etc)

I don't know the game very well to answer that but our team has been scrapping several things out of the game, including some DLC bringing weapons. We are releasing the 2013 version because we know its more user-friendly. 

Not all the content will be available, and we are willing to remove more things until we have the game in a state that is the game you all love.

@Charly (sorry if this has been asked) with defiance 2013 being an older game will the graphics be updated/upscaled to match modern day hardware

yes, if the game has a good acceptance allowing us to scale up the team, an hybrid between 2013 and 2050 is a possibility. We are OPEN to everything, it all depends on how the game evolves.

Ngl im willing to buy microtransactions if it will help keep defiance alive.( to an extent)

yes, the game will be monetized with microtransactions but our goal is not to get rich with it but to make it grow; going too aggressive will simply kill the momentum. In the end we won't be doing massive amount of changes early so its only fair that we keep it simple with the MTX.

Everyone seems to be glossing over the part of it's going to be vanilla 2013 without any of the newer stuff they added down the line cause they don't know how the game will.be received. We're asking a million questions about newer content that has already been answered

yes, with some things removed. We will open the game few days before (with a wipe in between) for you to take a quick look and provide feedback before we officially open.

Do we have an estimated date/time at all for this to be completed?

we will open the gates to the public on the 18th of April, 2025.

https://fawkesgames.com/defiance/

You have a fancy counter there.

I assume down the line if the team figures it out, that any 2050 exclusive stuff will be added to 2013 and it just becomes best of both?

nothing is closed - we don't have any major plans locked down for the game. Our goal is to work with you to improve it, starting with the game as it was, with major "offenders" removed and bringing back what makes sense. From there, if there is enough acceptance, we are open.

More like a request please do not remove swords from the game like 2050

noted, swords are good.

@Charly With a release date so close the game must be reconstructed already surely. Is it already up and functioning internally or is there still work to do?

is already functioning

I'm still looking around the site, but is FawkesGames primarily focused on MMO games?  If not, I might have another game that could be looked into and a discord server kinda like this.

no, we aren't solely focused in MMO, we have 2 browser games too for example

Whats the storage space? (If it isn't on the launcher)

same requirements as before, we aren't making major changes. 

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/defiance/11595